TigerChef

The foundation of many desserts is a crisp, flaky crust or tender dough. As a professional chef, you need to make sure that you achieve consistent results to satisfy your customers every time. Using the right baking techniques and bakery equipment will help you attain this goal. Whether you serve your guests cream puffs, éclairs, pies, or tarts, use these tips to produce the highest quality dough and crust.

Choux Pastry Tips

Making choux pastry, the dough used in cream puffs and éclairs, is a delicate art. One of the most important but often skipped steps in the process of making this particular kind of dough is that of weighing your ingredients. Use a bakery scale to ensure that your proportions are always exact and that the resulting dough will be perfectly light. Once you have mixed the dough, avoid letting it dry on the stove. Letting it dry like this is another common mistake: the water makes the dough rise. During baking, it is even more crucial than for other types of fare not to open the door as the dough needs to rise at a precise rate and leaving the door closed prevents the pastries from falling. Finally, when you fill the pastries, do so with pastry tips that will barely leave a noticeable hole for a polished finished product. You can tailor this aspect of the job to your specific pastries by using an adapter such as Thermohauser’s Pastry Tip Advisor.

Pie Crusts and Tart Shells

When creating a pie crust or tart shell, a glass dish works best for accomplishing a perfectly crisp crust. Increase flakiness by replacing a teaspoon of your usual liquid with the same amount of lemon juice or vinegar for each cup of flour. The taste remains unchanged. All ingredients that you use in a pie crust or tart shell should be very cold to prevent the fat from absorbing too much flour. Even fillings should be placed into the crust cold. When you bake a double-crusted pie, use a preheated baking sheet under the dish so that the top and bottom crusts bake evenly. This technique allows you to avoid undercooked bottom or overcooked top crusts.

Putting these simple tricks to practice will make it possible for you to create desserts that your customers will want to taste again and again. Your pastry dough and crusts will be the ideal texture and consistency. The best part is that none of these tips are difficult or costly, but they can make a huge difference in the quality of your products.

Filed under: How-To • General • Food Quality

Tags: bakery equipment, bakery scale, baking sheet, baking techniques, pastry tips