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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?

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Last modified on: July 31^th 2025

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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.

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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.

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