Everyday Gourmet: Baking Pastries and Desserts

Series: Great Courses

4.4

(51)

Episodes

Rating

TVPG

Year

2012

Language

English

Publisher

The Great Courses

About

Get a quick, easy, and comprehensive guide to the fundamentals of baking like a professional with The Everyday Gourmet: Baking Pastries and Desserts. These six lessons invite you to join Chef Stephen L. Durfee as he gives practical tips and insights on baking anything. Filmed on site at the CIA's Greystone campus in Napa Valley, this series is suitable for novice and master baker alike.

Related Subjects

Episodes

1. Handle with Care-Basic Doughs

30m

Understand several basic techniques and methods you can then expand on to make a wide range of unforgettable desserts. Here, focus on organizing your workspace, methods for proper measuring, and ways to cream butter, sugar, and eggs to the right consistency. Then, watch as Chef Durfee makes cookies and pound cake and shows you what can go right, and what can go wrong as well.

2. Mixing It Up-Methods for Cakes

30m

Regardless of what cake you're making, they all revolve around several basic mixing methods. What are they? And what are their secrets? Chef Durfee takes you step-by-step through baking a rich devil's food cake and several egg foam cakes (a chiffon cake and an angel food cake), the latter of which helps demonstrate the right--and wrong--way to whip eggs and cool your cakes.

3. Blue-Ribbon Winners-Pies and Biscuits

30m

Here, learn everything you need to know about flaky dough, which can often be intimidating even for an experienced baker. First, gain confidence in making a buttery pie crust by learning how to mold it with your hands or pastry tools, how to blind-bake it, and even how to make an attractive latticed top. Then, explore some of the secrets to making tender, flaky biscuits and beautifully golden-brown scones (which have their own unique rules for baking).

4. Lighter Than Air-Cream Puffs

30m

Cream-puff pastry is unique in that it's a twice-cooked pastry dough. And its applications go far beyond what you'd expect. In this lesson, master the aft of baking and experimenting with puff pastry and use it to create some unbelievably decadent desserts. Among these: chocolate eclairs, cream puffs, and deep-fried Mexican churros. Along the way, you'll also get tips on making pastry cream, chocolate ganache, and caramel topping.

5. Simple to Elegant-Custards

30m

Vanilla-infused crème anglaise. Butterscotch pudding. Crème brulee (complete with a blowtorched sugar topping). Learn tips and tricks to wowing your dinner guests with these delectable egg-based custards, all the while strengthening your confidence in the sometimes tricky art of baking with eggs on the stovetop or in the oven. By the end of this lesson, you'll discover just why custards make a great dessert choice: they're surprisingly easy to bake and they always lead to an elegant, refined product.

6. Final Touches-Mousse and Dessert Sauces

30m

Whip your more advanced baking skills and techniques into shape in this final lesson devoted to light and luscious mousses and creams. After learning how to make your own whipped cream, chocolate mousse, dessert sauces, and vanilla bean panna cotta, you'll watch Chef Durfee as he demonstrates the best ways to unmold, plate, and present your desserts with flair and your own unique touch--just like a professional chef.

Extended Details

SeriesGreat Courses

Closed CaptionsEnglish

Artists

Stephen L. DurfeeActor