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1: Chapters

  • Page ID
    21179
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    • 1.1: Baking and Pastry Equipment
      As with anything, practice is the key to becoming proficient in any task and in the kitchen, the mastering of the tools is essential. Each tool is designed to perform a task. In order to master task the Pastry Chef need to understand the equipment and what each piece is used for. A keen understanding of the workings of the equipment is also important for the finished product to be its best.
    • 1.2: Dry Ingredients
      One of the most important ingredients in the baking process is flour. Almost every item made has some type of flour added. It is the main building block of breads, pastries and most cakes. The production of flour can be traced through the centuries to the beginning of civilization. An important fact for a baker to know is the difference between hard and soft wheat. This gives the baker the ability to know which type of flour to use for the application needed.
    • 1.3: Quick Breads
      These breads are an ideal solution to the bakers who love bread but do not have the time or resources to spend on yeast breads. These breads are relatively quick to makes as their name suggest. They are leaved with chemical leaveners that make them ready to bake in a short amount of time. These breads are usually tender with very little mixing time, which allows very little gluten formation. The mixing methods used for quick breads are usually just a few minutes and easy to do by hand.
    • 1.4: Yeast Doughs
      Bread is the one of the simplest and yet most complicated of items to make. Most doughs consist of flour, water, salt and yeast. The art of making simple and complex doughs is understanding the nature of the item and what affects the finished product – gluten development and the fermentation of the leavener, yeast.
    • 1.5: Pastry Doughs
      These doughs differ from the previous doughs in that they are not leavened. They have a more tender crumb and are usually used as a base to be filled such as tarts. The names of these are derived from the French and give indication to the texture of the finished product.
    • 1.6: Custards
      When you hear the word custards we all think of pudding. Pudding, however, is a word that can describe many different types of dishes in the culinary world. There are savory dishes such as blood sausage that are also knows as puddings. For the purpose of this chapter we are going to discuss the custards that are served in restaurants as dessert.
    • 1.7: Cake and Buttercreams
      To make a great cake the baker must take great care in creating the batter. The cake itself is a base for which the rest of the ingredients are built upon. The process starts with high quality ingredients. The rest is an art from that follows specific formulas and mixing methods to produce a light and delicious finished product.
    • 1.8: Pie Doughs and Ice Cream
      Pies gains popularity through out Europe with the first Cherry Pie credit going to Queen Elizabeth I. Pies came to the Americas with the English settlers but the thick crust was seen as a vessel for the fillings. As the pie evolved the crust went from vessel to part of the dish. Today Pies are a traditional American dessert.
    • 1.9: Cookies
      One of the most varied items in the pastry world is the cookie. They are made into various shapes, sizes and textures. From chewy to soft batch, crunch to bite size bits. Depending on where you are in the world the name cookie will not mean anything. Only in North American do we consider a cookie a cookie!


    This page titled 1: Chapters is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Tammy Rink & William R. Thibodeaux via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.