The Great British Bake Off by Love Productions

Author:Love Productions
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446417942
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

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TIP

For an easy dessert, split open the baked doughnuts and fill each with 2 tablespoons full-fat Greek-style yoghurt and 1 tablespoon apple and damson potted fruit.

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THE BAKERS WERE asked to create an array of tarts this year, from treacle tarts to a tarte tatin as well as classic French recipes. Our first challenge echoes their Designer Fruit Tart Showstopper Challenge which calls for intricate and impressive decoration.

The basic recipe is a Pâte Brisée. French tart pastry is made in a unique way. Rather than rubbing pieces of butter into flour in a bowl and then binding with water into a dough, the ingredients are mixed together directly on the worktop, then worked with the heel of the hand to make a smooth and flexible dough. The beauty of this dough, apart from the taste, is its adaptability – it can be rolled super-thin as the base for a quick and elegant tart, rolled out more thickly to fold around a sweet mixture for a good-looking rustic galette or neatly shaped into a fluted tart case for a glamorous filling.

For the best-tasting pastry you need butter with a fine, distinctive flavour – the French use unsalted lactic butter (made from slightly fermented whole milk) with a low moisture content. A touch of sugar helps ensure a crisp texture, while egg yolk adds richness to the taste, texture and colour of the pastry.

Use this tart pastry to make a Simple Apple Tart. The beauty of the apple slices is adornment enough, but why not complement their golden colour with some edible gold leaf to make it really special? Why not next move onto a seasonal fruit galette, and then a peach frangipane tart that uses a sweeter version of the pastry, Pâte Sucrée? Again, the fruits are the heroes of these recipes – if you take a little extra time cutting and placing them in the pastry, this will make all the difference to your showstopping finish. Not that you should forget the filling – it has to be as memorable as the tart’s appearance.

There is also a second set of Challenge recipes in this chapter – based on the Choux Pastry Gateau Showstopper Challenge from the French episode.

Choux is made only with plain flour, salt, butter and eggs. The magic, which transforms the raw ingredients into lighter-than-air pastry, is in the technique. Choux is twice-cooked, first in a saucepan and then in the oven. The consistency of the dough really matters because it isn’t rolled out. So when eggs are beaten into the flour, butter and water paste that’s been made on top of the stove, it’s vital to get the consistency right – too little beating and too much egg added and the piped dough won’t hold a good shape and puff up attractively in the oven; not enough egg and the pastry will be tough and taste more like cardboard. But the real secret to a successful choux dessert is thorough baking – it’s so important to bake this pastry until it is really golden and crisp enough to become a firm container.

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