The method for making pastries, pastries are a type of food. They are primarily made from ingredients such as flour or rice flour, sugar, oil and fat, eggs, and dairy products, supplemented with various other ingredients, fillings, and seasonings. They are initially shaped and then processed through methods such as steaming, baking, frying, or stir-frying.
Salt and Pepper Peach Crisp
What are the methods for making pastries?
There is a wide variety of pastries with numerous styles, totaling about 3,000 types. Mooncakes, cakes, and shortbread cookies are all considered pastries.
Production Methods
1. Characteristics
Pastry refers to a finished food product made primarily from rice, flour, beans, etc., supplemented with various other ingredients, fillings, and seasonings, which are shaped and then cooked using methods such as baking, roasting, steaming, or frying. Pastries carry the meaning of "dim sum" as commonly referred to in daily life, thus they are somewhat different from the flour-based snacks in the catering industry. Pastries can serve as breakfast items, tea snacks, or snacks during banquets. Pastries and the flour-based products of the catering industry can be considered as sharing a common origin but belonging to different trades. It is a relatively independent food processing technology, especially suitable for mechanized and mass production.
2. History and Classification
The production of pastries in China has a long history and exquisite craftsmanship. Coupled with the different ingredients and flavors used in various regions, numerous schools have emerged, the main ones being the Beijing style, Suzhou style, Cantonese style, Fujian style, Chaoshan style, Yangzhou style, Ningbo-Shaoxing style, Sichuan style, etc. Although the Sichuan style is not as famous as these other schools, it features unique ingredients and distinctive flavors, forming its own system. Sichuan pastries are mainly divided into the following categories:
1) Cereal-based snacks: such as Euryale ferox cake, osmanthus cake, mung bean cake, Hechuan peach slices, etc.;
2) Baked and fried snacks: such as phoenix tail pastry, longan pastry, dragon and phoenix cake, sesame cake, peach crisp, crystal dumplings, etc.;
3) Fried bulk snacks: such as puffed rice candy, sweet potato thread candy, white hibiscus pastry, Saqima, etc.;
4) Miscellaneous candies: such as peanut candy, peanut brittle, fish skin peanuts, etc.
In recent years, with the widespread application of Western-style pastries in China, Sichuan pastry production techniques have also been influenced by them. For example, most Sichuan pastries now use baking—i.e., cooking the ingredients in an oven—as their primary cooking method.
Due to the vast number of pastry types and complex production processes, and it being impossible to provide a comprehensive introduction here, a beginner in pastry making must first master the most critical stages, such as the pastry formula, shaping, and cooking, before starting to make pastries. Special attention must be paid to the pastry formula. If the formula is not mastered well, the finished product will be difficult to meet quality standards, let alone achieve mass production.
3. Salt and Pepper Peach Crisp
Peach crisp is one of the main types of crisp pastries in the Sichuan style. Its characteristics are sweet and delicious, crispy and crumbly. Regular peach crisps are sweet, but the salt and pepper peach crisp contains a small amount of fine salt, giving the finished product a slight savory taste in addition to its sweetness.
Formula: 2500g of premium flour, 1250g of white sugar, 1250g of lard or sesame oil, 5 eggs, 20g of fine salt, 15g of baking soda, 10g of ammonium bicarbonate
Method:
1) Place the white sugar, fine salt, baking soda, and ammonium bicarbonate in a basin. Crack in the eggs and mix well (machine mix for 5 minutes, or knead by hand for 10 minutes) until it becomes frothy. Then add the lard and continue mixing until the lard is fully incorporated with the other ingredients. Next, add the flour and mix evenly to form a crumbly dough.
2) Roll the dough into a long log and cut it into slices of even thickness. Alternatively, press the dough into a mold to form round, oval, or rectangular slices. These are the peach crisp raw pieces.
3) Place the peach crisp raw pieces on a baking sheet (with a 3cm space between the top and bottom trays), and bake in an oven at 160~180°C for about 8 minutes. When the surface of the peach crisps is golden brown and has natural cracks, remove them and let them cool to complete the process.
【Note】The chemical name for ammonium bicarbonate is ammonium hydrogen carbonate, a chemical leavening agent. However, the amount of ammonium bicarbonate must be small, otherwise the finished product will have an unpleasant odor.
Pretzels