1,534 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...

The proper use of a pastry bag

Ever used a pastry bag? Handy, isn't it, but unfortunately not very easy to fill. In fact, to be comfortable with this tool, you'd need 3 or 4 arms, which isn't very common.

Does that mean it's a goner? No, of course not. Here are 2 or 3 tips to help you get comfortable with it.

8,731 4.7/5 (19 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Pastry Pastry bag Pastry tip Utensil Method

Last modified on: December 5^th 2020

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

The proper use of a pastry bag

What is a pastry bag?

poche avec douilles

Quite simply, it's a kind of large cone-shaped plastic bag (the pouch), in the bottom of which we place an outlet, usually made of very hard plastic, polycarbonate (the socket).

The bag is filled with the chosen preparation - cream, paste, mousse, etc. - then closed, and the contents squeezed out through the nozzle.

This gives you complete control over the output (flow) and shape of the cream/paste, thanks to the nozzle.

It's the favorite, indispensable tool of pastry chefs, who use it time and time again. In fact, they use the term "pocher", which in this context doesn't mean cooking, but dressing with a pastry bag.

In fact, bakers love to gently mock pastry chefs by saying that they "can't do anything without a pastry bag".

Useful at home?

Oh yes, indispensable even for an incredible number of preparations of all kinds. It's virtually impossible, for example, to make anything aesthetically pleasing in choux pastry without "poaching".

Difficult?

It's hardly complicated in principle, you just press on the bag and the mixture comes out, after which it's much harder to control the effort and precision of the gesture, but that comes with time.
Poaching regular macaroons, for example, is not at all easy, especially at first.

The first difficulty is filling the pouch, which sounds a bit odd when you say it like that, but if you're alone in the kitchen, it can quickly become a real pain: you have to spread the pouch, pour in the cream (sometimes in several stages), push it to the bottom, scrape out the rest, be careful that what's in the pouch starts to come out through the nozzle when the filling isn't finished, close the pouch, avoid air bubbles and leaks, and that's where the 3 or 4 arms I mentioned almost come into their own...

How do you do it?

poche pincée 1) If your preparation is rather liquid, such as mousse, cream, etc., pinch the tip of the bag with a frozen food clip, a large clothespin or even a rubber band to prevent leakage during filling.

poche dans un litre gradué 2) Place the empty, pinched pouch in a container with a high rim (like a graduated liter), spread the edges apart and place in front of you.

poche remplie 3) Slowly pour the mixture into the bag, then scrape it all down with a maryse (no spillage).

poche prete 4) Close the pouch by twisting the plastic (to avoid air bubbles) and remove it from the high-sided container. You can leave it to stand for a while, so your preparation is protected from the air.

pochage 5) When you're ready to poach, place the pouch with the tip upwards, remove the tongs, turn downwards and poach!

That's it, you know it all, but I'd like to finish by pointing out that, at first, it can be a bit disastrous, as you have very little control over the flow of the pouch and the shaping, but don't lose hope, you'll see with time and experience, it'll come...

Tosum up: to fill a pouch properly, pinch the end if the preparation is rather liquid, then fill with the pouch placed in a high-sided container, not held in the hand.

Lasts posts

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20252,0335

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 3^rd 20257,1363

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 26^th 20256,6375

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 25^th 20256,6945

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 8^th 20254,8285

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

The cake and the raisins

When you bake a cake, like a cake or pound cake, you may have already encountered this thorny problem: How to make sure that the raisins, or the candied fruits, or any other small filling, do not fall to the bottom of the pan during the baking process?
May 31^th 201915 K4.7

Butter doesn't make you fat, unless you eat too much of it.

Whenever I'm discussing cooking and recipes, there is one idea which comes up frequently, like this: "Oh no! But that's got butter in it" (I should add, for the sake of accuracy, that this is something I hear more frequently from women, who are almost all concerned with keeping their figure). ...
March 26^th 201245 K4.5

The golden-brown finish on puff pastry

Let's take a look at the tricky matter of producing puff pastry with an attractive, golden-brown finish. French pastry chefs call this "dorure" (literally, "gilding"). Behind this quirky term there lurks a real problem (and the solution): when using puff pastry (pâte feuilletée) for a pie, or...
February 8^th 201847 K 24.6

Cooking time for pasta

What is as good and simple as pasta? Not much, I think, and it's so easy to prepare: boiling water, salted (or not, depending on your taste), a few minutes of boiling and it's ready. The only "difficulty", so to speak, is the respect of the cooking time and the risk of, unfortunately, overcooking...
July 18^th 201923 K4.6

Parmesan cheese crusts

If you use Parmesan cheese (Parmigiano Reggiano) in your recipes, you may have already noticed: when you grate it, it becomes (very) difficult near the crust, especially if it is a slightly aged parmesan, as the cheese gets harder and harder. So we stop grating, leaving some crust on top, and a...
September 14^th 202217 K4.8