Almond cream or frangipane

(Found inTexts)
Light and delicious, it is used in a lot of desserts like tarts, cakes and pies (epiphany galette).
441K 25 44 min. January 23^th 2022

Sweetcrust pastry (pâte sablée)

(Found inTexts)
Sweetcrust pastry is one of the basic pastry of French patisserie, used in many tart and cakes recipes, but it can also be rolled out and cut into biscuits, delicious with tea or coffee. This recipe is given for those who have a mixer (Kenwood, KitchenAid or other), but it can also be done with your...
467K 24.4 33 min. July 1^st 2019

Natural leaven

(Found inTexts)
Leaven is a natural raising agent, a fermented mixture of water, flour and the microscopic yeasts which are present in the air. It's a delicate living substance, sensitive to the external environment. The recipe is around 4000 years old and dates back to the Egypt of the Pharaohs, via a beautiful...
1.7M 304.0 7 days 15 min. April 3^rd 2020

How to roll out pastry for a tart

(Found inTextsStages)
Rolling out pastry from a block and lining a tart mould or tin is not as straighforward as all that. To help you to succeed every time, here is a very simple tip. It will to change your opinion of tarts...
289K4.6 23 min. October 13^th 2010

How to glaze a tart

(Found inTextsStages)
Professional pastrycooks usually say that "a beautiful cake is already half sold", it is one of the reasons why they do not put a tart on sale without glazing it ("abricoter" in Fench), i.e. coating it with a thick apricot syrup. This glaze gives a glossy finish to the tart (see the photographs...
436K4.4 7 min. February 15^th 2016

How to bake blind

(Found inTextsStages)
This method allows you to cook a tart case, and then fill with a preparation which may or may not need further cooking (fruit, chocolate, crème patissière , etc...).
905K5 1 hour 40 min. May 6^th 2017

How to make chocolate chips

(Found inTexts)
These chocolate chips, very fine, are perfect for decorating a dessert, but they can also be incorporated in a preparation like mint ice-cream for example.
266K3.8 5 min. February 21^th 2011

Shortcrust pastry (pâte brisée)

(Found inTexts)
This is for sweet or savoury tarts, quiches or pies. The difference between this and sweetcrust pastry (pâte sablée) is in the very small amount of sugar and the absence of ground almonds.
371K 24 31 min. December 29^th 2019

Express sauerkraut

(Found inTexts)
Sauerkraut (choucroute in French) is a traditional Alsatian recipe. It consists of fermented cabbage slowly cooked with white wine, potatoes and a variety of salted pork meats. This is a simplified and fairly quick version.
351K 13.9 2 hours 24 min. February 21^th 2011

When to add salt to cooking water?

(Found inTexts)
Is it better to salt cooking water, for vegetables for example, at the beginning when it is cold or when it boils? I always heard that one should salt "after", when water is boiling, because if it is salted "before" it will take longer to boil. True or false? Let's try the experiment...
140K4 12 min. July 25^th 2017

Pistachio cream

(Found inTexts)
Very similar to almond cream, pistachio cream is ideal for filling or topping all kinds of cakes and tarts. Just like almond cream, it swells during cooking.
290K 64.1 33 min. October 4^th 2012

Cherry and pistachio tarts

(Found inTextsStages)
A shortcrust pastry case baked with pistachio cream, then topped with Griottine cherries.
174K 25 1 hour 20 min. July 4^th 2010

Apple amandine tarts from Brélès

(Found inTexts)
Amandines are small sweetcrust pastry tarts filled with fruit and topped with almond cream. Here's a rather more sophisticated version made with stewed apple, rice pudding and almond cream.
177K3.7 1 hour 10 min. March 1^st 2012

Tomato tatin

(Found inTexts)
A savoury shortcrust pastry with Parmesan is used to cover tomatoes cooked in two stages, first in the pan, then in the oven. As for a classic tart tatin, the whole thing is then turned upside down.
138K4.8 2 hours 35 min. December 5^th 2010

Lime (or lemon) curd

(Found inTexts)
Lime curd is a delicious conserve and variation on the traditional lemon curd, made with limes, eggs and butter. It's the perfect filling for either large or small tarts.
152K5 54 min. July 10^th 2011

Little lime tarts

(Found inTextsStages)
With this very quick recipe, you can make little tarts that are nothing like those you find in the shops.
120K4.3 40 min. October 10^th 2021

Apple semelles (flat apple tarts)

(Found inTexts)
The French semelle is a flat rectangular tart with a base of puff pastry. In this version, a layer of stewed apple is spread on the pastry, then topped with finely-sliced fruit.
147K4.3 1 hour 5 min. October 28^th 2011

Langoustine and leek tarts

(Found inTexts)
Small puff pastry cases filled with a layer of chopped leeks, fried langoustines (also known as scampi or Dublin Bay prawns), topped with hollandaise sauce.
102K4.2 1 hour 28 min. May 13^th 2012

Cheese tart

(Found inTextsStages)
This is a very simple recipe for a "Pontarlier" style cheese tart that allows you to prepare a number at the same time. They freeze very well, so you can easily stock up for later.
83K4.2 5 hours 10 min. February 3^rd 2013

Crusty cockle tart

(Found inTexts)
A small puff pastry tart case filled with cockles in a cream and egg-yolk sauce ("a la poulette" in French).
99K4.3 2 hours 52 min. March 17^th 2013

A bread oven

Building a bread oven was until a few years ago a job for the professionals. But now you can buy a kind of kit which allows you to build your own bred oven without professional masonry know-how. You should know that the kits only provide the main part of oven, the hearth, where you light the fire...
1.1M3.5 August 29^th 2023

My best addresses...

My good addresses, favourite suppliers, ingredients, products and equipment.
296K4.0 August 29^th 2023

Closed fire cooking

Construction of a Fayol bread oven: closed fire cooking, with the embers removed .
50K4.4 August 29^th 2023

The amateur baker

You may have noticed over the pages of this site, I am passionate about everything that is related to the bakery: I love making bread, pastries, maintain my leaven, etc.. This page contains links to all the different parts of the site where we talk about bread: recipes, special pages, etc.
163K 44.1 August 29^th 2023

Good fridge management

We all have a fridge at home – it's an indispensible part of the kitchen and so much a part of the furniture that we tend not to pay it much attention. But often, out of habit, we don't use it properly. Here are a few tips to help you get more from your fridge. .
25K4.4 April 19^th 2011

Different kinds of pastry and dough

When cooking in general, and particularly in baking, we can make and use many different kinds of pastry and dough. All built on the same "base": flour - a powder to which we add fat, liquid or both to produce the dough which is then cooked. .
105K 14.0 November 6^th 2012

Artichoke stalks

When preparing artichokes for cooking, you may well already know that we often need to remove the first round of leaves, if they are tatty or dirty, as well as the inedible stalk. The operative word here is “remove” , rather than “cut off”.
47K4.3 October 25^th 2016

What is the difference between bakery and patisserie?

This is a question that you may well have asked yourself and which I will attempt to answer. In France the two trades of "boulangerie" (bakery) and "pâtisserie" (patisserie and confectionery) have always been quite distinct, but where exactly do the boundaries lie? .
119K 14.1 February 7^th 2017

What can I use for blind baking a pastry case?

When it comes to home-made desserts, tarts are always popular. They can be divided into two basic types: those cooked with their filling, such as an apricot and almond cream tart, and those where the filling is added after baking the pastry case, such as a strawberry tart or chocolate tart. For...
105K4.5 May 2^nd 2017

When should I change my knife?

I already spoke to you in a previous post about knives, those without which nothing is possible (or almost) in the kitchen, so I'm going to come back to them a bit and try to answer the question "When should I change my knife?
11K4.7 November 2^nd 2017

Egg yolks and caster sugar

We often come across recipes where we need to mix egg yolks with caster sugar. This would appear to be a very ordinary and simple thing to do but, be warned, these two ingredients can behave oddly together.
72K 24.4 February 15^th 2018

Is it really necessary to cream egg yolks?

Let’s try and answer a question that crops up in cookery and patisserie, even if it verges on the existential: do the egg yolks in a custard recipe really need to be beaten until pale, or not?
37K4.3 February 28^th 2018

The right weight of pastry for a pie

Let's try to solve a thorny problem: How much dough will I need when I make my next pie? You're planning to make a pie, you're going to use your favourite mould or circle, but how much pastry will you need to fill it completely with a well spread pastry, without being too thin, or on the contrary...
58K4.3 March 20^th 2020

Circles vs. moulds tins

If you like to bake or make quiches, pies etc. you must surely have one or more pie pans at home, in different diameters and perhaps materials. They are indispensable, without them there is no way to make beautiful pies, and they work very well, but you have another option, instead of moulds,...
11K5 October 2^nd 2020

Let's rehabilitate spinach

We are currently (as I write this) in the season of fresh spinach, and it is a delicious vegetable that unfortunately has a bad reputation among a lot of people, children and teenagers in particular. I wonder if this lack of appetite isn't due to what I call, probably unfairly, "school food...
4,1284.8 May 7^th 2021

What happens to the bread when you make it?

This bread that we eat every day, and that our baker makes for us, what happens during its manufacture so that it becomes bread? I will try to answer this question, and to summarize the complex alchemy that takes place.
8,8184.9 May 28^th 2021

The peak of the apple season

As I write these lines, we are in the middle of the apple season, and it's an apple year, as you may have noticed if you have apple trees around you, they are bursting with fruit! Excellent news for the people in the west of France in particular, but let's have a little thought for those in the...
4,9305 October 23^th 2021

The two frying pans

Where we see that a non-stick frying pan, if it is very practical in general, sometimes it is not enough.
7,1244.7 February 26^th 2022

The color of the bread crumb

When you go to buy bread, at your baker's, at the time of the choice, if you hesitate of course, you will undoubtedly be very sensitive to the color of the crust, and you will be right. The color of the crust, from golden, to sometimes very dark, deep brown almost black, depending on the maturity...
13K4.6 April 30^th 2022

The preservation of bread

Eating fresh bread is always a delight, the crust crumbles deliciously, you take full advantage of the taste of your bread (80% of this taste is in the crust), it is a fleeting moment to enjoy. Who hasn't already eaten the crouton or croutons of his baguette, on the way back from the bakery? ...
10K4.7 June 11^th 2022

When I was a kid, I didn't like...

Maybe you've already made this strange observation: when you were a kid, there were things you hated, but as an adult it's almost the opposite? For example, you used to hate spinach or chicory, but now you love it?
5,8015 November 5^th 2023

It's spinning too fast!

When you need to grate or slice vegetables, you generally use an electric machine that does all the work: a food processor, a mixer with a "slicer" extension or similar. Are these machines really suitable? Generally speaking, yes of course, but there's one criterion that often poses a problem,...
6,1495 November 12^th 2023