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It is 2024, and the world of baking has scaled in all aspects - techniques, fusion, evolution of traditional dishes, and equipment. It is high time that home bakers and pastry chefs advance their skills. Baking today is not just limited to making pastries and cupcakes, decorating cakes, and curating cooking.
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Whether in India or abroad, seasoned pastry chefs are mastering old techniques, fusing traditional dishes with modern equipment, and experimenting with flavours to create innovative sweet dishes. As a home baker, you need to hone your skills by mastering a few advanced baking techniques.
Preparing Meringue
In hot-shot bakeries, you will notice delicate and creamy layers adoring cakes, pies, and mouses. It is lightweight and delicious. Making a perfect batch of meringue is tricky, but once you ace the technique, you will be able to create a variety of new recipes. The process of making meringue includes beating egg whites along with hot sugar syrup to create a fluffy lightweight mixture with soft peaks. Its glossy texture elevates the presentation of any dessert.
Laminating Dough
To make puff pastry or croissant, you need to ace the art of laminating the dough. It is a laborious process that requires a baker to be patient and willing to stand on the counter for hours. Butter and dough are layered to create pockets of air. Hence, when you bake a layered dough, it expands in size. This technique is responsible for the buttery and flaky texture of puff pastry.
Also Read: 6 Guilt-Free Chocolate Desserts To Indulge In
Tempering Chocolate
Tempering chocolate is an art because if you are not careful about the temperature, you can end up with a burnt mixture. If you are careful about the heat, you can achieve a glossy and smooth finish of chocolate, which can be used to decorate desserts. After the chocolate cools off, biting into it is no less of a heavenly experience.
Caramelising Sugar
While it seems like a cakewalk, caramelising sugar requires you to be constantly on your toes to achieve the perfect colour and finish. You have to subject sugar to the right temperature and maintain it to ensure the syrup has the right colour and consistency. If you heat it at a high temperature, the granules will burn and the delicacy will taste bitter. Caramelising sugar helps to decorate candies and other desserts.
Baking For Different Diets
Home bakers need to understand the dietary preferences of their customers. With the rising number of people opting for eggless, gluten-free, and vegan desserts, you have to experiment with alternatives without compromising the taste. Hence, you must be able to work with oats milk instead of dairy, oil or curd as a replacement for eggs, and millet to avoid the use of all-purpose flour or wheat.
Ace Sugar Work
Working with sugar requires a lot of hard work and practice. From icing, and stretching, to pulling and shaping hot sugar, every technique is different. You need to learn and follow them through. You can create beautiful designs to decorate cakes, cupcakes, pastries, and other desserts. However, you should also experiment with sugar alternatives considering many people are giving up processed sugar because of its adverse effects on health.
