Natural leaven

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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

Tarte à l'coloche

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This is a tart from northern France combining apples with caramel. The name in the ch'ti dialect means "bubble tart", on account of the bubbles made by the caramel while it is cooking.
19K 1 hour 47 min. October 20^th 2021

Poached eggs

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Poached eggs are cooked, without the shell, in barely simmering (nearly boiling) water. White should be firm and yolk soft, that's the difficulty. This recipe teaches you how to succeed with three important points.
302K5 2 hours 40 min. January 8^th 2013

Classic French white bread

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This is the recipe for classic, everyday French bread raised with yeast. French bakers call this "pain courant". It is quicker and easier to make than leavened bread or new leavened bread, so ideal for a beginner.
286K4.1 3 hours 50 min. June 6^th 2017

Apricot fool

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The traditional fruit fool is a rather old-fashioned dessert, consisting of whipped cream (Chantilly) with a fruit coulis gently folded into it.
181K5 17 min. August 8^th 2010

How to bake blind

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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...).
904K5 1 hour 40 min. May 6^th 2017

How to succeed in making sabayon (syllabub)

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A sabayon is a delicious and delicate preparation based on egg yolks and sugar, with a liquid added (wine, alcohol, fruit juice, etc), which is then whipped in a bain-marie until it is both light and smooth. Usually sabayon is sweet (syllabub), but you can make it savoury, in which case there is...
919K 54 18 min. November 12^th 2017

Génoise (Genoa sponge)

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A Génoise (or Genoa sponge) is a very light and delicate cake. It is good on its own, but is more often used as the base for many different French-style gâteaux, with layers of mousse or cream between 2 (or more) layers of sponge. It is a tricky recipe to get right, rather technical, but here's a...
220K 53 1 hour 13 min. March 10^th 2019

Crème brulée

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Crème brûlée (burned cream) is quite easy to prepare: it's a simple egg-cream dessert. The only difficulty is in making the delicious crunchy caramel layer on top. The perfect crème brulée (for me) is a cold and soft cream, with on top a nice hot caramel crust. This is a completely new version...
1.6M 74.3 4 hours 38 min. December 31^th 2011

Leavened bread

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It might be harder to achieve good results than with traditional yeast bread, but what a flavour! It also keeps better. This recipe is designed for baking bread in a wood-fired oven but, of course, you can use the conventional oven in your kitchen.
1.2M 23.8 6 hours 26 min. May 23^th 2017

How to beat egg whites

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Beat egg whites is very common in cooking and pastry, here are some tips to get there easily.
545K5 5 min. February 21^th 2011

Exotic fruit tart

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An exotic fruit tart (bananas, kiwi and pineapple), with crisp pastry and almond cream which are cooked beforehand. It's a rather simple recipe, but the final result will impress your guests.
306K5 2 hours 23 min. May 27^th 2020

Passion fruit jellies

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Usually to make fruit jellies or (fruit "paste"), it's like jam but you need to cook fruit pulp and sugar much longer. Unfortunately, this long cooking is bad for both vitamins and flavour. In this recipe we use a special jam gelling agent, to reduce cooking time as much as possible .
320K4 2 hours 30 min. July 4^th 2018

Some hints for a pizza-party

Some hints for a successful pizza party.
185K3.7 August 29^th 2023

Flours

At the most basic level, wheat grain is put through a mill, which produces a white-ish powder flour... Well, actually it's not quite that simple. First of all we need to distinguish between the different grains that can be made into flour: wheat of course, but also rye, barley, buckwheat, etc. So we...
720K 413.6 August 29^th 2023

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. .
104K 14.0 November 6^th 2012

The window-pane test in bread-making

The home bread-makers often ask themselves “Have I kneaded my dough long enough?” . A good question, as dough that is insufficiently kneaded will not rise properly or will fall flat when the top is slashed, which is very frustrating. To know when the dough is ready, one can rely on the length...
86K 23.9 June 16^th 2021

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

Unmoulding cakes while hot

When you make a cake, pound cake or whatever (what bakers call a "travel cake" because it's easy to carry around) you've most likely made a batter, either by hand or in a food processor, which you then pour into a buttered pan. It's a classic, and I've already talked to you about 2 or 3 tips on...
32K4.6 February 6^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.
8,6784.9 May 28^th 2021