Home-made terrine of foie gras

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Preparing your own home-made foie gras from raw is immensively satisfying: good quality liver and a simply amazing flavour – much better than anything you can buy. This recipe is a bit tricky, but quite within everyone's grasp, as long as you follow the 3 most delicate stages carefully. These are,...
5.2M 64.2 4 days 15 hours 50 min. December 17^th 2023

Old style brioche

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Classical version of brioche use yeast to raise the dough, but in this recipe some leaven is added. This make a more rustic brioche, with a small taste of leaven.
295K4.6 14 hours 6 min. December 19^th 2014

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

Sandwich bread

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Soft and moist, almost like brioche, it can be made in a tin or mould or as a classic long French-style loaf.
341K3.9 3 hours 26 min. October 24^th 2017

Surprise bread

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This recipe is for a large surprise bread so you can make six layers (48 small sandwiches if you divide each layer in 8), with three different flavours: smoked salmon/lime, smoked ham/butter, mayonnaise/chicken.
689K 84.5 6 hours 24 min. December 27^th 2020

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

Special small breads

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When you are have mastered the basic leavened bread, you certainly ought to try special breads: with nuts, cheese, seeds, etc... Here is a series of recipes, based on traditional leavened bread.
376K4 6 hours 26 min. October 13^th 2010

French baguettes

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This classic of French baking is rather different from the recipe for leavened bread, it's a question of making a good crust and light crumb along the whole length. To succeed, you should know that there are two secrets: water first of all (much more than for normal bread), and the working of the...
1.1M 364.7 5 hours 6 min. October 24^th 2017

New leavened bread

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This new recipe for leavened bread is simple and delicious, but needs rather long resting times. If you'd like more more information about making your own bread, look at this dedicated page.
894K 34.3 7 hours December 30^th 2019

Quail egg canapés

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This starter is a small canapé consiting of a toasted and buttered bread slice covered with a slice of smoked ham topped with a fried quail egg.
322K5 54 min. February 21^th 2011

Hotpot my grandmother's way

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If you like slow-cooked dishes prepared with loving care (mitonné), you will certainly love this hotpot recipe, with the taste of Franche-Comté, inspired by my grandmother. It's an old-fashioned dish full of flavours and aromas, cooked vegetables, stock, smoked sausages, all cooked long and slow.
330K5 4 hours 7 min. February 21^th 2011

Ciabatta

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Ciabatta is a small, very soft Italian bread. The name means "slipper". It normally takes a long time to prepare as a special leaven called "biga" is used, but this simplified version is quicker and just as good.
280K3.8 3 hours 21 min. October 24^th 2017

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.
287K4.1 3 hours 50 min. June 6^th 2017

Panettone

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Panettone is a brioche-style Italian loaf, made with dried fruit (raisins and candied peel) and flavoured with left-over citrus fruit. The recipe is a bit complicated but, above all, it takes time, a great deal of time...
130K5 1 day 1 hour 19 min. April 15^th 2020

Fillet of beef in a rosemary crust

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This is a sophisticated way to cook beef fillet (tenderloin): we make an unleavened bread dough (which will not be eaten), adding plenty of salt and lots of roughly chopped springs of rosemary. The beef fillet is seared all over in a frying pan, then wrapped in the dough before being cooked in a hot...
50K 14.8 50 min. August 26^th 2021

How to seal a terrine or casserole dish

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The French have a term for it: "luter", which means to seal around the lid of a cooking dish with dough. The dough forms a crust and hermetically seals in all the steam and flavours while the dish is cooking in the oven. This is a good way to concentrate flavours. The dish is brought to the table...
160K3.8 33 min. January 11^th 2017

Benoîton

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This curious name (explained below) applies to a small bread fingers made with a blend of wheat and rye flour, enriched with raisins and almonds.
41K 4 hours 32 min. February 4^th 2018

Montlebon toast

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Not just plain old cheese on toast, these slices are loaded with delicious toppings: bechamel sauce, caramelized onions and sticks of morteau sausage. The slices are finished with grated Comté, then browned in the oven.
37K5 26 min. March 29^th 2020

Mouna

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Mouna is a delicious citrus-flavoured brioche from the Oran region of Algeria. It origins are much disputed, but it was no doubt inspired by a brioche brought over by Spanish immigrants from the Valencia region: the "Mona de Pascua". However, it is also amusing to remember that the citizens of Oran...
54K1 18 hours 31 min. May 22^th 2019

Bistro sandwich

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The filling for this indulgent baguette sandwich is made with hard-boiled eggs and cold meat in a rémoulade dressing.
39K 18 min. June 21^th 2020

Leaven bread calculator

Small calculator for a good leavened bread.
274K4.1 August 29^th 2023

Making your own bread

In praise of home-made bread, so much better.
563K 63.9 August 29^th 2023

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

Basic temperature in bread-making

Basic temperature in bread-making.
225K3.7 August 29^th 2023

Soured dough

Underneath this strange name lies a baking secret: when you want to give a bread or pastry dough (without leaven, but with yeast) a certain percentage of fermented dough must be added, i.e. the same dough made the day before, and left to ferment overnight in the refrigerator.
143K 24.1 February 23^th 2024

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.
164K 44.1 August 29^th 2023

Raising (or leavening) agents

When we want to make a dough or batter rise when baking, either in patisserie or bread-making, we need to use a raising agent or leavening agent, one of which is called leaven. In the context of baking, a raising agent is simply what "makes something rise". It is a substance which, when added to...
51K4.8 June 16^th 2021

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? .
120K 14.1 February 7^th 2017

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...
13K5 October 10^th 2018

The first breads of humanity?

I have already told you in a previous article the beautiful story of the croissants, but do you know what it is about the bread, who "invented" it, where and when? Well, you can imagine that recent discoveries, in 2018, have profoundly changed the history of bread.
9,1695 February 16^th 2019

The French baguette and UNESCO

As you may have already read here or there, France has initiated for some time the procedure to try to have the French baguette classified as an intangible world heritage by UNESCO. When you put it like that, it sounds a bit namby-pamby, and it would be tempting to imagine an American (for...
10K4.9 March 18^th 2020

Let's go easy on the salt

In terms of cooking, I'm probably not teaching you much, salt is ubiquitous, we put it in almost all our dishes, in varying amounts depending on our taste, some like salty, others less, others still not. Its main role is the flavor, the taste, we say that it is a flavor enhancer, ie it reveals the...
4,6274.8 February 20^th 2021

The "caves" in the bakery and pastry shop

Maybe you've already done this? You want to make a brioche or a cake with fruit inside, you decide to proceed with your usual recipe, but also to add in the dough pieces of fresh and raw fruit, or whole fruit, for example pieces of apples or pears, good idea. When you bake it, everything seems to...
6,8604.9 March 27^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.
8,9224.9 May 28^th 2021

The long fermentation of bread

I had already told you in a previous article about the delicious little alchemy that happens when we make bread, let's try to go a little further this time, and try to discover what makes a good bread, in other words, which has taste. .
5,0234.9 April 13^th 2023