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 go well, you may notice that it puffs up more than usual, but nothing to worry about, on the contrary it's quite good news.
It's only when you cut it that you discover the problem, the pieces of fruit are not surrounded by dough, they are in a kind of cavity of the dough, much bigger than them, and so it's quite ugly all this empty space around, and moreover not very pleasant to taste.
When you bake it, everything seems to go well, you may notice that it puffs up more than usual, but nothing to worry about, on the contrary it's quite good news.
It's only when you cut it that you discover the problem, the pieces of fruit are not surrounded by dough, they are in a kind of cavity of the dough, much bigger than them, and so it's quite ugly all this empty space around, and moreover not very pleasant to taste.
10 K 4.9/5 (17 reviews)
Keywords for this post:PastryBakingCookingBreadCakeHollowBubblesHolesCaveLast modified on: March 27th 2021
The "caves" in the bakery and pastry shop
What happened?
It's very simple, you have intuitively added pieces of fresh and raw fruit which contain a lot of water. During the baking process, this water was transformed into steam by the heat, and this steam, which can't get out, pushed the not yet baked dough, therefore soft, around each piece of fruit, and formed this hollow that the bakers call "cavern". Once the dough is cooked, the cavern remains in place, even when cooling, and therefore gives this unsightly aspect.It happens as soon as you add something containing water to a dough, and it is much more pronounced when it is a leavened dough (brioche, bread, because of or thanks to the gluten network) or flaky dough, and much less on travel cakes (cake, cookies, ...) easier to steam through.
This also applies to salted food for example for a sausage in brioche you would have the same problem.
How to avoid this?
There are basically 2 solutions: Either you remove/reduce the water in the first place, or you do something to allow the cooking steam to escape.Removing the water, or at least reducing it is quite simple, for fresh fruit for example we cook them slightly before. For example for apples and pears, in a little butter and sugar, you can even caramelize them, which gives a whole new (delicious) taste to your cake.
For a sausage, same treatment, either you cook it in the oven, or you poach it before incorporating it.
This is the secret of very aesthetic brioche sausages.
For a galette des rois for example, it is about 2 discs of puff pastry with cream in the middle, we pierce a small hole, the chimney in the center of the galette to allow the steam to escape. Without this chimney you will have in the oven a kind of huge puff pastry bell, and full of emptiness.
It should be noted that for all this, we are more on a question of aesthetics and mouthfeel, the taste is not impacted.
In summary: To avoid cavities in your cakes, reduce the water brought by your inserts, or provide an outlet for the steam generated during baking.
Lasts posts
The importance of sieving
In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?September 3rd 2025418
The grease spray
As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...August 26th 20254,2245
Cake moulds
When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?August 25th 20254,5525
Thinning out herbs
If you need to add a long-stemmed herb (tarragon, mint, verbena, thyme, etc.) to a recipe, you'll probably only need the leaves and not the stem, so you'll need to remove the leaves. Leaf removal means keeping only the beautiful leaves, and eliminating the ugly stems and leaves, but how do you do...August 8th 20252,7605
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...July 31th 20252,8685
Other pages you may also like
The grease spray
As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...August 26th 20254,2245
A few tips for effective kneading at home
When you have to knead dough for bread or some other recipe, you may well use a food processor or the type of machine known as a stand mixer. The best-known brands are Kenwood and KitchenAid. They are useful tools, but here are a few tips to help you get the best out of them.June 23th 2021280 K 23.7
Steam for baking bread
What does steam have to do with bread-making? This is not only a bakers' secret, it is something you might not think of at all: if you make bread and bake it like a cake, you will end up with bread, but pale and with a thick, hard crust – a long way from the golden-brown crusty loaf you had in...June 16th 2021143 K4.5
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...June 16th 202194 K 23.9
The 3 secrets of Parisian flan
A flan Parisien, or boulanger, is a simple yet delicious cake. A cream, a mixture of milk, eggs and sugar, is poured into a raw pastry base and baked in the oven until the pastry and cream are cooked. This is the simplest version of the recipe, probably the original one, but nowadays the cream...July 21th 202313 K4.7
Post a comment or question
Follow this page (as 2 people already do)
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.