The Essence of Rough Puff Pastry

This post is going to be a bit more of a tutorial, rather than an 'essence'. The ratio is dead simple, but in this case, it's the method that's the tricky part. I've got lots of lovely pictures of my technique and the appetising results, so it shouldn't be too boring.

The Essence of Danish Pastry

The first thing I found when I started looking up recipes for Danish pastry was a load of articles saying "It's not as scary as you think!". Considering I actually didn't have an opinion on how scary it was before I started, that all actually made me feel worse about the whole thing.

Apple and Pear Muffins

Who likes fruit? I do!

The Essence of Muffins

A lot of people think muffins and cakes are the same thing. I definitely used to be one of those people, until a few weeks ago.

Turns out, they're not.

The Essence of Cake - Part 2

Link to Part 1

Pound cake is not quite as light or fluffy as sponge cake - it's more dense and bready in texture, because the butter whipping method doesn't create quite as much air as the egg method. Which is why sponge cake is might lighter - eggs whip up to a much greater volume, meaning they've incorporated much more air, and so they rise more during cooking. Neither one cake is better than the other. The best one depends on the situation or occasion, your personal tastes, and a whole load of other factors. Of course I recommend you make them both at once in order to compare!

The Essence of Cake - Part 1

Cake.

I have an odd relationship with cake. That is to say, my feelings towards it have been rather changeable over my lifetime. I expect as a child, I always assumed it was an easy thing to make - the first thing you make, almost equivalent to a batch of biscuits in terms of ease.

The Essence of Bread - Part 2

Link to Part 1

The trouble with ratios is that they don't explain absolutely everything. Even if you've never made bread before, you probably know that if you just bunged some flour, water and yeast together and didn't do anything else, you wouldn't end up with bread.

So I've also been looking into basic technique. The book, Ratio, gives an acceptable overview but I think even that assumed a bit of prior knowledge, and I was starting from a complete blank. I spent a while looking up simple techniques and things, and decided I had a decent enough idea to give it a try.

The Essence of Bread - Part 1

Do you know what bread is?

Think carefully, it's a difficult question.