RULES

My partner is a high end pastry chef, they are always talking g about wanting ca ele molds but how a decent set are prohibitively expensive.

My question is are copper molds worth the added cost over other metal molds? My thought is they seem to be an aesthetic choice over function is that the case?

If i were to gift her molds for function what sets might you suggest?

Trying my best to elevate my pastries at home, tried to see what I could do to go from a simple brownie to something you'd but at a pastry shop.

Inbetween the brownie and whipped ganache is a layer of raspberry gel to add a little extra flavour.

Hi i am looking for a recipe of a kind of Nutella just made of cacao powder, its for a dessert in our restaurant so I would greatly appreciate any help and recipe ideas based on cacao powdee only! Thanks in advance :)

I’m looking for recommendations for a new tabletop mixer for my commercial kitchen. We have 3 KitchenAid 6 qt “professional”mixers and they all suck. I’m looking to slowly start replacing them.

I made these meringues yesterday and I thought they turned out perfect, but when I cut one open the center had dissolved. Since they came off the tray after baking I thought they should be good, but I'm assuming now that they weren't done baking. They are quite large, so this would make sense. Here is what I did -

Made French meringues Baked for 1 hour at 240 F Cooled in oven for an hour Sat out overnight

Recipe:
100 g Whites 150 g Sugar 10 g cocoa powder 1/4 t lemon juice 1/4 t salt Topped with hazelnut and chocolate

Looking for a part-time role as a pastry chef in a restaurant with a dedicated pastry team, but I’m having trouble finding options.

Ideally, I’d love to work in a patisserie, but I’m studying abroad at Sciences Po and can only commit to 20 hours a week max. Any advice on finding restaurants or patisseries that might offer part-time opportunities

Trained at l’école ritz escoffier, been baking for over 7 years and worked at sexy fish as a commis chef for one year so have some experience.

Everytime I go to a bakery/chocolate shop No one makes anything with Feuilletine. I’m in NY and very surprised about this. Anyone know where I can get my hands on something delicious with a crunchy layer of feuilletine before I buy a whole bunch and make it myself?

So I'm trying to scale myself up.... I can flawlessly make a small batch of creme pat blindfolded, riding a unicycle 😎

BUT... I just tried to make a 3 big batches (using about 2500ml of milk each) and boy did it go pear shaped! Talk about lumpy custard....

One of my biggest questions is combining the hot milk back into the egg/sugar mix when you are working alone. I did think, post lumps, that the stand mixer with the whisk running might be a good help?

Any advice?

i accidentally used salted butter but i really can’t figure out what’s wrong with them. they have 12 layers btw… is that not enough? when i pulled them out the oven they were sat in like a pool of butter too, i don’t understand…advice please 😭

So, I've been laminating puff pastry (full puff) and croissant dough for like 12 years. Both are enriched doughs. Some recipes of one are almost the same as others, etc, etc. My puff dough has as much butter as my brioche. Obviously, brioche is more tender and more eggs. In general.

Is it redundant to have croissant dough and laminated brioche? In general? Sorry. I should test it. Just a busy bakery owner and I'm curious about your perspective. One of these days I'll get around to it.

I know that cornstarch based pastry cream will split during freezing, so I'm wondering if there is a good way to convert a recipe to using flour instead, which I assume would not split as much. The application is for a bread where the pastry cream will be baked along with the dough (such as pan suiss), so I'm also unsure if the splitting even matters in this context.

I live in a city with a metro of around 100k, where, unfortunately, there’s no really good bakery. A lot of folks here make decent money, and the cost of living is low, but the number one complaint is about needing to drive to nearby cities just to find good food. I think a high-end croissant shop could do really well here.

Here's where I'm at: I’m a home cook/baker who (probably) has more money than sense and I'm in the dangerous position to be able to afford to start a bakery (on a budget). I’ve got big ideas for the concept, recipes, and marketing, and I’m prepared to cover the initial costs. But there’s a catch—I only have about 5-6 hours a day to dedicate to this. Ideally, I'd find a partner to take a significant share of the profit and handle the early morning baking, and maybe even the actual process of making the laminating the dough, etc, and making the fillings. I think ideally that I would be the person who handles the business, marketing, menu, etc, while also working in the kitchen during afternoons to come up with the flavors of the week, making fillings, etc. I don't need need to maximize personal profit, so I could actually afford to pay an employee a very good wage -- I'm more in this for the long-term growth, so I would be happy to pay them very well (though I wouldn't want to give up much, if any, equity).

Of course, I'd need an espresso machine to offer coffee too. But is the only way to go about this to go big? I’d prefer to keep it small—have a streamlined menu with just a few items each week: 2 filled croissants, 2 filled cruffins, a plain croissant, pain au chocolat, and maybe a Danish now and then. Maybe a savory pastry. I’m not looking to run a full-scale bakery with bread or dozens of items.

Another idea I had was to make all the items in one location and maybe open a few small coffee stands around the city, so more people could get the pastries without the need for a large, single-location bakery. I don't really want to deal with running around and cleaning tables, but that may be an expectation in this area, I don't know.

Would love your thoughts. Is it feasible to keep it small and focused? Or is there a way to balance quality and profitability without going all in on a big space with lots of seating? Any advice on what could work (or what to avoid) would be great! Am I delulu?

edit-- thank you to each and every one of you, esp for the cold water. I really need to keep this small to keep the damage under control. I'd be better off being strictly an investor and financing a buildout/renting a space to a baker.

This image is from a reel I came across on instagram. I’ve tried google image search and what comes up are clipper blades, but this is a scoring tool with evenly spaced blades. I asked and the person who made this video only said it’s a specialty scoring tool 🙄 I thought it’d be nice to have this tool in my collection but I’m having a hard time finding it or even finding out what it’s called. If any of you use this or something similar, can you share the name? Thanks!

Anyone have any recommendations for an online croissant making course that goes into a lot of depth?