Popping into a bakery can be a shortcut to exploring a new cit. The allure of something sweet has transcontinental appeal, which means locals are bound to surround you, and the baked goods offered reflect the enveloping culture.In historic Vienna, Austria, where Demel has reigned since 1786, old codgers and young adventurers alike frequent the Baroque-style coffee salon for baked delicacies and confections. No bakery captures San Francisco quite as well as the inventive Tartine Bakery & Cafe, founded a decade ago by a husband-and-wife team. In a cozy neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, James Beard-nominated pastry chef Ken Forkish of Ken’s Artisan Bakery bakes his baguettes twice a day.Given that all bread is made from essentially the same ingredients, what makes some loaves sublime? Time, and quality, but perhaps skill outweighs them both. If you are out for an early walk in the Rose City, you might catch a glimpse of Forkish’s flour-dusted hands expertly working the dough in his open kitchen. And though baking styles around the world vary, the end products findtheir fans. Flour Bakery + Cafe in Boston takes local traditions into decidedly delicious new directions; Vegan Treats in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, breaks with tradition entirely. Either way, all you need to do is dig in.
Bakery As a Family Business
Baked goods extend back to ancient history, according to Stephen Holloway, writing for Kitchen Project.com in the online article, “The History of Bread.” Egyptians baked bread thousands of years ago, and bakers joined bakers’ guilds in Ancient Rome. In the United States, colonial-era bakeries were social places where people gathered to warm up and gossip, according to Food Timeline.org in the online article, “Colonial and Early American Fare.”
Types
Bakeries can range from small artisan businesses, specializing in one or two items, to large industrial bakeries that supply food retailers with packaged baked goods, according to A Touch of Business.com in the online article, “How to Start a Bakery.” Franchise bakeries create baked goods with access to the brand recognition, customer base and mentorship opportunities available after paying regular franchise fees. Bakeries may also venture into catering opportunities; for example, delivering hot muffins and donuts and fresh orange juice to business offices before important meetings. Bakeries sometimes specialize in just one or two items, such as wedding cakes or bagels prepared according to kosher standards. You can also start a bakery specializing in baked goods for pets, according to Style Career in the online article, “Pet Bakery.”
Licensing
Bakeries will require permits to operate, including a business license, tax identification number, retail license and food permit, according to “How to Start a Bakery.” Check with local agencies to learn about area requirements and regulatory guidelines. In California, for example, the baking industry is regulated by the Department of Alcoholic Beverages.
Equipment
You’ll need to purchase or lease a variety of equipment to begin a bakery business, according to “How to Start a Bakery.” This includes mixers, ovens, packaging materials (such as white paper bags or folding doughnut boxes) and raw materials for creating baked goods. Dine-in customers will require tables and chairs to enjoy your croissants, pastries and cookies. Bakery businesses also need standard office supplies, including business cards, telephone, fax machine for submitting bids, computer, accounting software and printer.
Pricing Considerations
Retail bakeries can be affected by rapid price changes for key ingredients, necessitating the need to raise prices for customers, according to Edward Lee in the 2008 article, “Adjust Your Bakery Business,” on Modern Baking.com. Some bakeries take such opportunities to educate customers about the relationship between the cost of soybean oil or eggs and their daily strudel, according to the article, even asking customers to sign petitions related to farm legislation. Consider promoting one item that will always remain the same price. For example, $1 day-old baked goods or $1 cups of coffee.
Definition Pastry
Pastry is the name given to various kinds of baked products made from ingredients such as flour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening,baking powder, and eggs. Small tarts and other sweet baked products are called “pastries.”
Pastry may also refer to the dough from which such baked products are made. Pastry dough is rolled out thin and used as a base for baked products. Common pastry dishes include pies, tarts, quiches and pasties.[1][2]
Pastry is differentiated from bread by having a higher fat content, which contributes to a flaky or crumbly texture. A good pastry is light and airy and fatty, but firm enough to support the weight of the filling. When making a shortcrust pastry, care must be taken to blend the fat and flour thoroughly before adding any liquid. This ensures that the flour granules are adequately coated with fat and less likely to develop gluten. On the other hand, overmixing results in long gluten strands that toughen the pastry. In other types of pastry such as Danish pastry and croissants, the characteristic flaky texture is achieved by repeatedly rolling out a dough similar to that for yeast bread, spreading it with butter, and folding it to produce many thin layers.
Types Of Pastry
Shortcrust pastry is the simplest and most common pastry. It is made with flour, fat, butter, salt, and water to bind the dough. This is used mainly in tarts. It is also the pastry that is used most often in making a quiche. The process of making pastry includes mixing of the fat and flour, adding water, and rolling out the paste. The fat is mixed with the flour first, generally by rubbing with fingers or a pastry blender, which inhibits gluten formation by coating the gluten strands in fat and results in a short (as in crumbly; hence the term shortcrust), tender pastry.[4] A related type is the sweetened sweetcrust pastry, also known as paté sucrée, in which sugar and egg yolks have been added (rather than water) to bind the pastry.
Flaky pastry is a simple pastry that expands when cooked due to the number of layers. It bakes into a crisp, buttery pastry. The “puff” is obtained by the shard-like layers of fat, most often butter or shortening, creating layers which expand in the heat of the oven when baked.
Pecan and maple Danish pastry, a puff pastry type
Puff pastry has many layers that cause it to expand or “puff” when baked. Puff pastry is made using flour, butter, salt, and water. The pastry rises up due to the water and fats expanding as they turn into steam upon heating.[5] Puff pastries come out of the oven light, flaky, and tender.
Profiterole or cream puff, a choux pastry
Choux pastry is a very light pastry that is often filled with cream. Unlike other types of pastry, choux is in fact closer to a dough before being cooked which gives it the ability to be piped into various shapes such as the éclair and profiterole. Its name originates from the French choux, meaning cabbage, owing to its rough cabbage-like shape after cooking.[6]
Choux begins as a mixture of milk or water and butter which are heated together until the butter melts, to which flour is added to form a dough. Eggs are then beaten into the dough to further enrich it. This high percentage of water causes the pastry to expand into a light, hollow pastry. Initially, the water in the dough turns to steam in the oven and causes the pastry to rise; then the starch in the flour gelatinizes, thereby solidifying the pastry.[7] Once the choux dough has expanded, it is taken out of the oven; a hole is made in it to let the steam out. The pastry is then placed back in the oven to dry out and become crisp. The pastry is filled with various flavors of cream and is often topped with chocolate. Choux pastries can also be filled with ingredients such as cheese, tuna, or chicken to be used as appetizers.
Phyllo (Filo)
Phyllo is a paper-thin pastry dough that is used in many layers. The phyllo is generally wrapped around a filling and brushed with butter before baking. These pastries are very delicate and flaky.
Cake decorating as an art
Decorating a cake usually involves covering it with some form of icing and then using decorative sugar, candy, chocolate or icingdecorations to embellish the cake. But it can also be as simple as sprinkling a fine coat of icing sugar or drizzling a glossy blanket of glazeover the top of a cake. Icing decorations can be made by either piping icing flowers and decorative borders or by molding sugar paste,fondant, or marzipan flowers and figures.
This has become a form of unique artistry. A person’s imagination can create anything. From a single layered cake, decorated simply, to a multi-layered 3 dimensional creation, that is decorated with edible ribbons made of sugar. What was once a fun way to make a child’sbirthday cake, by cutting shapes out of cake and piecing them together to create a shape, has gone into preformed character pans, and now has become shaping creations out of fondant and different forms of marzipan.
Using this new form of fondant artistry should be used on a heavy cake consistency. It can, however, be used on the traditional cake mix purchased in a store. Fondant is heavier than traditional knife spread frosting. Pre-made fondant that is available in the cake decorating section in stores has little flavoring. A homemade fondant can be made quickly for very little cost. Homemade fondant tends to have a better flavor than the pre-made store bought version.[citation needed]
Fondant exists in many different colors, and its initial form is soft and easy to handle. In this form, cake decorators are able to mold fondant into many different artistic expressions. Many of these expressions are also taught in professional cake decorating classes. Fondant is primarily used to cover cakes, but it is also used to create individual show pieces for cakes.
Royal icing is a sweet white icing made by whipping fresh egg whites (or powdered egg whites, meringue powder) with icing sugar.[2] Royal icing produces well-defined icing edges and is ideal for piping intricate writing, borders, scrollwork and lacework on cakes. It dries very hard and preserves indefinitely if stored in a cool, dry place, but is susceptible to soften and wilt in high humidity.
Sugar paste is a substance used in cake decorating to create flower decorations. Marzipan is often used for modeling cake decorations and as a base covering underneath fondant.[2]
Professional institutes, such as Le Cordon Bleu, have begun segregating their cookery schools, to create completely separate institutes dedicated to cake-making.
Sprinkles
Sprinkles are very small pieces of confectionery used as a decoration or to add texture to desserts—typically cupcakes, cookies,doughnuts, ice cream, frozen yogurt, some puddings, and in the Netherlands and Australia, sandwiches or bread. The tiny candies are produced in a variety of colors and are generally used as a topping or a decorative element.
Types Of Sprinkles
Popular terminology for this confection tends to overlap, while manufacturers are more precise with their labeling. What consumers often call “sprinkles” covers several types of candy decorations that are sprinkled randomly over a surface, as opposed to decorations that are placed in specific spots. Sanding sugar; crystal sugar; nonpareils; confetti; silver, gold, and pearl dragées—not to be confused with pearl sugar (which is also sprinkled on baked goods); and hundreds-and-thousands are all used this way, along with a newer product called “sugar shapes” or “sequins”. These latter come in a variety of shapes, often flavored, for holidays or themes, such as Halloween witches and pumpkins, or flowers and dinosaurs. Candy cane shapes may taste like peppermint, and gingerbread men like gingerbread cookies.
Sanding sugar is a transparent crystal sugar of larger size than general-use refined white sugar. Crystal sugar tends to be clear and of much larger crystals than sanding sugar. Pearl sugar is relatively large, opaque white spheroids of sugar. Both crystal and pearl sugars are typically used for sprinkling on sweet breads, pastries, and cookies in many countries.
Some American manufacturers deem the elongated opaque sprinkles the official sprinkles. In British English, these are sugar strands orhundreds-and-thousands (the latter term is always used to refer to the multi-coloured spherical type, and alludes to their supposed uncountability). In the Northeastern United States, sprinkles are often referred to as jimmies. Jimmies are usually considered to be used as an ice cream topping, while sprinkles are for decorating baked goods, but the term can be used for both.[1]
The sprinkles known as nonpareils in French and American English are tiny opaque spheres that were traditionally white, but that now come in many colors. The sprinkle-type of dragée is like a large nonpareil with a metallic coating of silver, gold, copper, or bronze. The food-sprinkle dragée is now also made in a form resembling pearls.
Toppings that are more similar in consistency to another type of candy, even if used similarly to sprinkles, are usually known by a variation of that candy’s name—for example, mini-chocolate chips or praline.
Uses of Sprinkles
Sprinkles generally require frosting, ice cream, or some other sort of sticky material in order to stick to the desired food surface. They can be most commonly found on smaller confections such as cupcakes or frosted sugar cookies, as these generally have more frosting and smaller diameter than do cakes.
In the Netherlands, chocolade hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles) is used as a sandwich topping (similar to muisjes and vlokken); this is also common in Belgium, Suriname, and Indonesia, once a colony of the Netherlands.[11] These countries also use vruchtenhagel andanijshagel (made of sugar and fruit/anise-flavour respectively) on sandwiches (mainly at breakfast).
Fairy bread is the name given to the children’s treat of sprinkles or nonpareils on buttered white bread. Fairy bread is commonly served at children’s parties in Australia and New Zealand.
A dessert called confetticake has sprinkles mixed with the batter, where they slowly dissolve and form little colored spots, giving the appearance of confetti. Confetti cakes are popular for children’s birthdays in the United States. The Pillsbury Company sells its own variation known as “Funfetti” cake, incorporating a sprinkle-like substance into the mix.
Sugar substitute
A sugar substitute is a food additive that duplicates the effect of sugar in taste, usually with less food energy. Some sugar substitutes are natural and some are synthetic. Those that are not natural are, in general, called artificial sweeteners.
An important class of sugar substitutes is known as high-intensity sweeteners. These are compounds with many times the sweetness ofsucrose, common table sugar. As a result, much less sweetener is required and energy contribution is often negligible. The sensation of sweetness caused by these compounds (the “sweetness profile”) is sometimes notably different from sucrose, so they are often used in complex mixtures that achieve the most natural sweet sensation.
If the sucrose (or other sugar) that is replaced has contributed to the texture of the product, then a bulking agent is often also needed. This may be seen in soft drinks or sweet tea that are labeled as “diet” or “light” that contain artificial sweeteners and often have notably different mouthfeel, or in table sugar replacements that mix maltodextrins with an intense sweetener to achieve satisfactory texture sensation.
In the United States, six intensely sweet sugar substitutes have been approved for use. They are stevia, aspartame, sucralose, neotame, acesulfame potassium, and saccharin. There is some ongoing controversy over whether artificial sweetener usage poses health risks. The US Food and Drug Administration regulates artificial sweeteners as food additives.[1] Food additives must be approved by the FDA, which publishes a Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) list of additives.[2] To date, the FDA has not been presented with scientific information that would support a change in conclusions about the safety of these approved high-intensity sweeteners (with the exception of Stevia, which is exempt under FDA’s GRAS policy due to its being a natural substance in wide use well before 1958, and has been approved by FDA). The safe conclusions are based on a detailed review of a large body of information, including hundreds of toxicological and clinical studies.[3]
The majority of sugar substitutes approved for food use are artificially synthesized compounds. However, some bulk natural sugar substitutes are known, including sorbitol andxylitol, which are found in berries, fruit, vegetables, and mushrooms. It is not commercially viable to extract these products from fruits and vegetables, so they are produced by catalytic hydrogenation of the appropriate reducing sugar. For example, xylose is converted to xylitol, lactose to lactitol, and glucose to sorbitol. Other natural substitutes are known but are yet to gain official approval for food use.
Some non-sugar sweeteners are polyols, also known as “sugar alcohols“. These are, in general, less sweet than sucrose but have similar bulk properties and can be used in a wide range of food products. Sometimes the sweetness profile is ‘fine-tuned’ by mixing with high-intensity sweeteners. As with all food products, the development of a formulation to replace sucrose is a complex proprietary process.
Use Of Sugar Substitute
Sugar substitutes are used for a number of reasons, including:
- To assist in weight loss – some people choose to limit their food energy intake by replacing high-energy sugar or corn syrup with other sweeteners having little or no food energy. This allows them to eat the same foods they normally would while allowing them to lose weight and avoid other problems associated with excessive caloric intake.
- Dental care – sugar substitutes are tooth-friendly, as they are not fermented by the microflora of the dental plaque. An example of a sweetener that can benefit dental health isxylitol. Xylitol works to prevent bacteria from adhering to the tooth surface, thus preventing plaque formation and eventually decay. The carbohydrates and sugars consumed usually adheres to the tooth enamel. Bacteria can feed upon this food source allowing them to quickly multiply. As the bacteria feed upon the sugar, they convert it to acid waste that in turn decays the tooth structure. Xylitol cannot be fermented by these bacteria, so the bacteria have difficulty thriving, thus helping to prevent plaque formation.
- Diabetes mellitus – people with diabetes have difficulty regulating their blood sugar levels. By limiting their sugar intake with artificial sweeteners, they can enjoy a varied diet while closely controlling their sugar intake. Also, some sugar substitutes do release energy but are metabolized more slowly, potentially allowing blood sugar levels to remain more stable over time.
- Reactive hypoglycemia – individuals with reactive hypoglycemia will produce an excess of insulin after quickly absorbing glucose into the bloodstream. This causes their blood glucose levels to fall below the amount needed for proper body and brain function. As a result, like diabetics, they must avoid intake of high-glycemic foods like white bread, and often choose artificial sweeteners as an alternative.
- Avoiding processed foods – individuals may opt to substitute refined white sugar with less-processed sugars, such as fruit juice or maple syrup. (See List of unrefined sweeteners).
- Cost – many sugar substitutes are cheaper than sugar. Alternative sweeteners are often low in cost because of their long shelf-life and high sweetening intensity. This allows alternative sweeteners to be used in products that will not perish after a short period of time.
