1,562 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

Add a bay leaf

Bay leaf: small in size, but big in flavor. You'll find it in hundreds of recipes, and it's often added to cooking meat, in a sauce or broth, usually accompanied by other herbs or products. It's a staple of Provençal, Mediterranean and Oriental cuisine, but not the only one.

Usually, in a recipe, it's a single line such as "Add a bay leaf...", which we tend to follow to the letter and therefore throw the leaf in question into the pan, but is this the right method?

7,503 5/5 (6 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Laurel Leaf Broken Sauce Taste Tip Trick Folding

Last modified on: July 31^th 2025

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

Add a bay leaf

Well, actually, it's not a very good method to simply add it. Of course, you have to put the sheet on, but there's a little gesture beforehand that changes everything.

data-ligne="If you add it as it is, as in this photo, it will of course add flavor, but not that much, because the whole leaf "encloses" this famous flavor a little.|/images/blog/laurier-brisees-1.webp|lefeuille de laurier intacte|d "

To improve this addition of bay leaf, it's best to first break the leaf by folding it back on itself, a little like an accordion...

... and only then add it to the recipe.

In this way, we reproduce a fairly classic trick with this gesture: smell a bay leaf, it smells a little, break it between your fingers and smell again, you'll appreciate the distinct difference.
Note, by the way, that you can't eat a bay leaf, it just gives a taste, and must be removed afterwards, so it's best not to cut it, or to cut it lengthwise or in fairly large pieces, which are easier to remove.

feuilles de laurier coupées

To sum up: always break a bay leaf before adding it to a recipe, as the taste will be much better than with an intact leaf.

Lasts posts

A tablet holder

Perhaps you too cook by consulting your recipe on a tablet or phone, and putting it down on your worktop? It's practical, but not the best solution. Here's a look at how you can make an inexpensive, almost universal stand.
March 14^th 20266065

Pre-calibrated pastry dough

When making pie dough (shortbread, shortcrust, sweet...), it's always a good idea to make a lot at once, and then divide it into pieces, which you can freeze. I've already pointed out the mistake not to make, which is to form a ball before freezing. It's difficult to roll out afterwards because...
March 9^th 20268805

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20252,9635

Getting out of the fridge early

Very often when you're cooking, you need to take food or preparations out of the fridge, to use them in the recipe in progress. There's nothing tricky about this: you just take them out of the fridge and use them, usually immediately, in the recipe. But is this really a good method?
November 24^th 20251,9225

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 20251,747

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Parsley stems

Parsley, whether curly or flat, is a delicious ingredient in many recipes, where it is used both raw and cooked. When used raw, in a salad for example, where it always provides, alone or with other herbs, a remarkable freshness, only the leaves are kept. And when used cooked?
July 28^th 20258,392 13

A tablet holder

The beautiful story of the croissants

As you may have already noticed, cooking, baking and pastry-making are full of stories or legends, usually very romantic, about this or that product or recipe. This is often the case for named recipes, for example tarte tatin, peach melba, paris-brest and many others, but it also applies to very...
October 10^th 201820 K5

Kitchen ovens

You certainly have one in your kitchen, an oven, the essential tool for all kinds of cooking, whether in the kitchen of course, but also in pastry, bakery, pizza, and many others. Here is some information on its structure and operation.
May 16^th 202035 K4.4

How to zest a fruit?

You will have no doubt noticed that many recipes call for the zest of citrus fruit. The zest is that outer layer of the skin which adds so much flavour to a dish. There are many different ways to peel off the zest and various tools are available. Here is a summary of the “dos and don'ts” of...
November 5^th 201348 K3.8

Follow this page

If you are interested in this page, you can "follow" it, by entering your email address here. You will then receive a notification immediately each time the page is modified or a new comment is added. Please note that you will need to confirm this following.

Note: We'll never share your e-mail address with anyone else.

Alternatively: you can subscribe to the mailing list of cooling-ez.com , you will receive a e-mail for each new recipe published on the site.