Pastry making is a very specialized discipline and requires specific knowledge and techniques. When you start baking, you don't necessarily know where to start. That's why I decided to write an article on the fundamental techniques to master if you want to make French pastries. Knowing these terms will help you understand and master all the basic gestures.
To help you, I have tried to illustrate each one with examples. Let’s get into the main topic :
I selected +20 common verbs related to basic techniques. Here is what you should understand when you bake or make pastries.
Some of these terms can’t be translate, that’s why I bracketed french terms or put quotation marks for each term.
'PREPARING' TERMS
Roll out (abaisser): spread,stretch and flatten a dough with a rolling pin or a rolling mill. This technique is useful when you make a pie crust dough, cookies or cracker.
Blanch (blanchir): in cooking, blanch means boil vegetables of fruits to make it more fondant but still colorful and firm. After boiling them, you have to refresh them in cold water for better peeling or to remove pungency. When you bake, blanch means whip eggs with sugar until the mixture whitens. It can also mean whisking butter until it whitens.
‘Chablonner’: spread or cover a pie crust dough / cookie or cake with chocolate or a thin layer of fat (e.g, butter, praline …). It’s very useful to keep you pie crust dough crispy. If you put cream in your tart, the layer of fat will protect the cake or dough from soaking.
Clarify (clarifier) : remove impurities by filtering, decanting. In pastry making, butter is sometimes melted to separate the whey from the impurities. This is what we call clarified butter. Furthermore, clarify eggs means separate the white and the yolk from the egg.
Lay down / spread ( coucher ): to pipe a cake batter on a baking sheet, using a piping bag or a spatula. The shape of the cake can be elongated, round ... (e.g. éclairs, puff pastries, sponge cake ...)
Cristallyze (cristalliser): melt a couverture chocolate to the right degree, depending of your recipe. The result won’t be the same as far as you melt the chocolate at 38°C or at 50°C. Let’s check how to master the chocolate.
Deburring (ebarber): removing the protruding part from the edges of a cake or pie crust dough. This technique is very useful to clean your cake/tart’s edges, so it looks regular.
Emulsify (émulsionner): to combine liquid molecules in another liquid, or in another material, in which it is not miscible. For example, when you make a ganache, you have to mix two non-miscible liquids (chocolate + liquid cream). To combine those two liquids, we use to mix with a spatula (and not a wisk) to avoid incorporating air.
Flour (fleurer): dregde the work surface with a thin film of flour. This is the ‘must to know’ move to master as a beginner.
Churn/whip (foisonner): increase the volume of a mixture by turbining (cream or ice cream).
‘Foncer’: press and sink a dough at the bottom and the edges of a mould, following the shape of the mould, to pour other mixtures such as creams, ganaches …
‘Fraiser’: Gently crush the ingredients of a dough with the palm of your hand to smooth it, while avoiding stimulating gluten. This technique should last at most one minute, otherwise you might give the paste fullness and body.
‘Macaronner’: mix with a spatula while dropping almond powder until you obtain the consistency of a macaron batter. This move is very technical because it requires at the same time a technical gesture and vision skills. The batter should be slightly airy and not too liquid.
Pipe: put a batter, mixture or cream (cream, paste) in a piping bag and press on it to obtain a specific shape of pastry or cream.
Whip: whisk a batter, a cream or a substance to make it lighter and increase in size (e.g., whipping egg whites).
Grate: use a grater to even out the edges of a pie. Or extract the zest of citrus fruits.
‘Sabler’: dry mixing of a fat and flour by kneading them delicately by hand (e.g, shortcrust pastry). The texture should be sandy. ‘Sabler’ is also the action of coating dry fruits or anything with cooked sugar, until a granular and sandy mass is obtained.
Firm up with sugar (serrer): whisk the egg whites and add sugar to firm them.
‘Siroper’: soak a cake base with syrup.
Turning: folding a piece of dough a certain number of times (e.g. puff pastry, croissant dough ...). Discover the complete recipe of croissant dough to master the turning technique.
'COOKING' TERMS
Hot-water bath (bain-marie): plunge a container into boiling water to cook slowly and gently your preparations (without direct contact with the hot plate). In pastry making, the bain-marie is a good technique to melt chocolate and make a sabayon (cook eggs slowly). The chocolate is a very delicate raw material. Temperature is determinant to obtain a certain result (e.g, glossy finish or mat finish). Discover the whole properties of the chocolate.
Blind bake (cuire à blanc): baking a pastry dough (puff pastry, shortbread or shortbread) without filling. The fruits/creams will be added halfway through or after baking. You can put dry seed on the pastry dough to prevent it from swelling during baking. (e.g, rice, chickpea…)
‘Dorer’: brush a pie crust dough with beaten eggs to give a shiny aspect and so that the pastry turns slightly brown after baking.
‘Frapper’: to lower abruptly the temperature of a hot preparation or a container.
Poach: cooking a preparation or food in a liquid that is kept at a temperature close to boiling, at 80-85°C (e.g, custard or pâte à bombe).
‘Praliner’: coat dried fruits with cooked sugar, then crystallize the sugar before cooking the whole thing (e.g, almond praline). Just follow the ‘sablage’ technique to make a praline paste. This technique is very useful nowadays (very trendy) because it brings textures and pronounced flavours to pastries.
If you master all of these techniques, I can guarantee you that you will forge a strong foundation as fundamentals skills in party making.
You don't know how to put into practice all these techniques in your next recipes ? Enroll in our course with concrete exemples and recipes : The Art of Baking
See you soon on The Paris-Best
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