1. Chapter 8
Desserts and Baked Goods

2. Baker’s Ingredients
In baking, strengtheners provide stability and ensure that the baked item doesn’t collapse once it is removed from the oven.
Shortenings/fats make baked goods moist, add flavor, and keep the baked item fresh longer.
Sweeteners add flavor and color to baked goods.
Leaveners allow the dough or batter to rise.
Thickeners, combined with the stirring process, determine the consistency of the finished product.
Flavorings affect a baked item’s taste and color.
Liquids used in baking can be water, milk, cream, molasses, honey, or butter.
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Chapter 8 | Desserts and Baked Goods

3. Baker’s Measurements
Standardized recipes for bakery products are called formulas.
Flour always has a proportion of 100%, and the percentages of all other ingredients are calculated in relation to the flour.
The formula for baker’s percentages is:
Weight of ingredient ÷ (Weight of flour × 100 percent) = percent of ingredient
A yield is how much of something is produced.
Sifting adds air to flour, cocoa, and confectioner’s sugar; removes lumps; and filters out any impurities.
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Chapter 8 | Desserts and Baked Goods

4. Types of Dough
Lean doughs are made with flour, yeast, water, and salt.
Rich doughs are made with the addition of shortening or tenderizing ingredients.
The straight-dough method can be used to make yeast breads can be used for all types of doughs—lean, rich, and sponge.
Kneading dough develops the gluten in the dough and gives it the stretch and give it needs to develop the proper texture.
Bakers also use the sponge method to mix yeast doughs.
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Chapter 8 | Desserts and Baked Goods

5. Yeast Bread Preparation
The 10 basic steps in making yeast breads are:
Scaling ingredient
Measuring
Mixing and kneading ingredients
Combines ingredients, distributes yeast, & develops gluten
Fermentation
Yeast acts on sugars & starches to product carbon dioxide & alcohol
Punching down
Relaxes gluten & evens temp.
Portioning
Divide dough into portions
Rounding
Shape dough into balls
7. Shaping
Shape into forms
8. Proofing
Final rise
Baking
Common temps:
Cooling and storing
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6. Yeast Bread Lab

7. Quick Breads and Cake Batters
Quick breads and cakes are popular snack and dessert items and are usually easy and quick to make.
Quick breads, such as biscuits, scones, and muffins, can be prepared faster than yeast breads. Quick breads use chemical leaveners rather than organic ones, and therefore don’t require a rising period.
A batter is a semi-liquid mixture containing flour, liquid, and other ingredients.
A batter typically has more fat and sugar than a dough and is usually thin enough to be poured.
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Chapter 8 | Desserts and Baked Goods

8. Icing
Icings, or frostings, are sweet coatings for cakes and other baked goods.
Icings have three main functions:
They improve the keeping qualities of the cake by forming a protective coating around it.
They contribute flavor and richness.
They improve appearance.
In general, use heavy frostings on heavy cakes, and use light frostings on light cakes.
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Chapter 8 | Desserts and Baked Goods

9. Cake Lab
Before starting, research the difference between soft peaks and stiff peaks. You will need to know the difference in order to make the angel food cake correctly.

10. Steamed Pudding and Soufflés
Steamed puddings and dessert soufflés are made of batters that require special handling.
Steamed puddings are more stable than soufflés because of the greater percentage of eggs and sugar in the batter.
Soufflés are lightened with beaten egg whites and then baked.
Baking causes the soufflé to rise like a cake. As the soufflé rises, the moisture evaporates and the light batter sets temporarily.
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Chapter 8 | Desserts and Baked Goods

11. Pies
Pastry chefs make pies using a basic dough—it is made of three parts flour, two parts fat, and one part water (by weight).
When a pastry chef makes a pie crust properly, it is flaky, tender and flavorful—the perfect complement to the filling.
Crumb crusts contribute a nutty, buttery flavor that highlights cheesecake or frozen fillings.
In general, bake pies just until they begin to take on a golden color.
Pastry chefs usually bake cheesecake from a cream cheese or quark (a cheese that is a lot like sour cream) and egg batter on a crumb crust, using a spring-form pan.
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Chapter 8 | Desserts and Baked Goods

12. Pie crust demo video

13. Pie lab

14. Rolling and Shaping Pie Dough Video

15. Apple Pie Lab

16. Cookies Pastry chefs make most cookies from rich dough.
Rich dough uses the same creaming method as quick breads and cake batters, but with the liquid and the flour added at the same time.
Due to their high sugar content, cookies are best when they are baked in convection ovens.
The seven makeup methods for cookies are:
Dropped
Bagged
Rolled
Molded
Icebox
Bar
Sheet
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Chapter 8 | Desserts and Baked Goods

17. Chocolate Preparation and Products
Chocolate is produced from cocoa beans picked from cacao trees.
Processors roast the cocoa beans, and machinery is used to loosen the outer shells and crack the beans into small pieces, called nibs, which are the basis of all cocoa products.
The cocoa beans are crushed into a paste that is completely unsweetened, called chocolate liquor.
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Chapter 8 | Desserts and Baked Goods

18. Chocolate Storage
Wrap it carefully, and keep it in a cool, dry, well-ventilated area.
Do not refrigerate chocolate. Refrigeration causes moisture to condense on the surface of the chocolate.
Sometimes a white coating, called bloom, appears on the surface of the chocolate. The bloom indicates that some of the cocoa butter has melted and then recrystallized on the surface.
Properly stored, chocolate will last for several months.
Cocoa powder stored in tightly sealed containers in a dry place will keep almost indefinitely.
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Chapter 8 | Desserts and Baked Goods

19. Tempering Chocolate
Cooks melt chocolate in a process called tempering, melting the chocolate by heating it gently and gradually.
To temper chocolate, chop the chocolate into coarse pieces and place it in a double boiler, a stainless steel bowl over water, simmering on very low heat.
Tempered chocolate will coat items with an even layer and then harden into a shiny shell.
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Chapter 8 | Desserts and Baked Goods

20. Frozen Desserts
Quality ice cream has a custard base, melts readily in the mouth, and does not weep, or separate, when it softens at room temperature.
Gelato is an Italian version of ice cream. Unlike ice cream, however, it does not contain eggs.
Sherbet contains milk and/or egg for creaminess.
Sorbet contains no dairy, just fruit juice or purée with sweeteners and other flavors or additives.
Frozen yogurt contains yogurt in addition to the normal ice cream ingredients.
Frozen yogurt both freezes and melts more slowly than ice cream.
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Chapter 8 | Desserts and Baked Goods

21. Plating and Presenting Desserts
Good plate presentation requires careful attention to colors, shapes, textures, and arrangement of food on the plate.
Guests eat first with their eyes, then their noses, and finally with their mouths.
There are two areas of presentation technique: first, the food itself, and second, the plate, platter, or dish as a whole.
When plating desserts, everything on the plate should be edible.
It’s best to place dessert decoration in threes, because that tends to be appealing to the eye.
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Chapter 8 | Desserts and Baked Goods

22. Dessert Challenge Project