How to Make Fancy Pastry Like a Pro
Reader Michelle writes:
Joe, I’m frustrated. I consider myself a fairly accomplished baker but every time I set out to make a really fancy pastry the whole thing ends in disaster and my entire day is wasted. I don’t want to give up but I just can’t seem to get the fancy pastry thing right. Should just stick to bread and cookies? Help!
Michelle, as a white-haired man named Clinton once said: I feel your pain. There’s not much worse than spending a long day making components for an elegant pastry, then having the whole thing collapse into an ugly, delicious mess. It happened to me over and over again, then I went to work in a pastry shop and saw how the pros avoided my mistakes.
While I’m something of a broken record on this subject, there’s really only one secret ingredient for success in fancy pastry: time. If you looked in the back of any pastry shop you’d see that more than half the man (or woman) hours spent in there are spent making components: creams, cake layers, fillings, toppings, crusts, garnishes, the list goes on. Assembly is just the final step in a long process that involves lots of time and lots of different people.
To succeed with fancy pastry at home, we need to try to mirror that process a bit. That is, to make components ahead — several days ahead if possible — store them, and save assembly for the last day. Most of us home bakers try to do the whole thing in one fell swoop. We bake the layers, make the filling, whip the topping and shape the garnishes all in one afternoon. When it finally comes time for assembly or shaping we’re strung out and pressed for time. In other words, prone to making mistakes.
But taking the professional kitchen approach we can not only improve the overall quality of the components we use (because we give each one the time and attention it deserves) we make a better looking pastry because we’re rested and alert when we get to the final building step. As I’ve often said, there’s nothing I like more on a sunny Saturday afternoon than one or two cold beers in the fridge and a pastry to build. Makes a man feel like a man, know what I mean?
So plan ahead, do a little each day and when all is said and done your fancy pastries will be working a whole lot better. Get back to me with any specific questions, Michelle. Carry one — and don’t fear the pastry!
A trick I learned from my mom (well 2 really):
If it fails figure out what you can do to turn it into your own creation – don’t be sad you didn’t get what you wanted, be glad you got to invent something new!
If it is not perfect never admit it! “Well this is the way they do it in East Prussia” or similar will always work, heck it may even be true as there are often 2 dozen ways to make the same pastry depending which side of which hill you came from.
You give great advice Joe & the best that you demonstrate regularly is “be fearless”, after all even the failures taste pretty good 🙂
Thanks for that, Frankly — and that’s excellent advice!
I like the East Prussia line particularly and will probably use it this weekend.
Cheers,
– Joe
Re: failures. Putting a brave face on helps.
I was giving a dessert party once, years ago, and an hour before guests were due I panicked — I was sure I would not have enough food. So I ran to the local good bakery, and bought two raspberry pies, beautifully boxed up, as insurance.
On the way home, some driver cut in front of me. I slammed on the brakes, avoiding a crash, but when I got home, the pies had slid out of their tins into their boxes, and their crusts had broken into pieces.
I was mad. And I was not going to waste those pies. So I cut them into pieces, and piled the broken crusts and raspberry filling onto a platter, put a layer of stiffly whipped sweetened cream over the mess, and grated dark chocolate shavings over the whole thing. It was the hit of the party! Several people asked for the recipe. . . .