What types of egg do we use in Baking?

There are several different forms of egg we use in our industry.The most common one used by the small bake shop are fresh shell eggs but we also get egg products such as frozen or refridgerated liquid egg and dry egg products.


What are the advantages of egg products over shell eggs?
The main advantage egg products have over shell egg is food safety, by law eggs have to pasturised to be sure they are free from the salmonella bacteria. Have a look at this website to see what other requirements have to be met in regard to Eggs in NSW.

http://www.foodauthority.nsw.gov.au/industry/fb-issues-safe-eggs.asp#eggregulationinnsw


In the bakery here we have used shell eggs, powdered egg whites and frozen whites and yolks.

How fresh is a shell egg?

We often refer to shell eggs as "fresh eggs" but how fresh are they really? In reality a fresh shell egg may be several weeks old by the time it arrives at your bakery.

http://www.pacefarm.com/EggFacts/freshness/tabid/279/Default.aspx

Is there any difference between a brown egg and a white egg?

The difference in colour comes from the pigment in the outer layer of the shell and is determined by the breed of hen, white hens lay white eggs, brown hens lay brown eggs. Think of it a little like your skin colour.

Underneath the shell the eggs are the same , the colour of the shell or the yolk do not affect the quality of the egg

Hi Ratio Cakes and Ingredients

WHAT GREAT CAKES!!

There good enough to eat!!!
We have now used several different methods to produce cake batters and today we focused on high ratio cakes.

What is a High Ratio Cake?
This type of cake has an increased amount of liquid and sugar in the basic formula (recipe). In other words the levels of sugar and liquids, which include milk, water and eggs, is in excess of the flour weight.

If we increase the sugar or liquids in a conventional cake batter we end up with a fault. This is because the formula will not be in balance, for example too much liquid results in a cake with a closed texture & poor volume.
So how do we make a cake with greater amounts of liquid and sugar without a fault??
We use specially formualted fat and flour.

HIGH RATIO FAT has an emulsifier in it so it will absorb or lock in a greater amount of liquid.

HIGH RATIO FLOUR is milled finer and because of this has a greater surface area. This greater surface area will allow the flour particles to absorb liquid more readily. The flour is also chlorinated, treating the flour with chlorine gas changes (modifys) the starch in the flour. It will now gelatinise or set at a lower temperatue, this is important because the cake batter is less stable then a traditional batter.

Who makes these types of cakes?
Commercial bakers make these types of cakes because:

1. They are easy to produce.
2. They are cheaper because water can replace egg and milk.
3. They have excellant keeping qualities due to the emulsifier and high % of sugar and water.

Methods Of Cake Production

We have all been here for 4 weeks now and have covered the 4 production methods for cake, can you remember what they are?

1. All In


2. Sugar Batter


3. Blend


4. Flour Batter

Can you identify the advantages in each of the methods?

1. In the All In method we are placing all the liquids in a bowl with the dry ingredients on top, we save on washing up, we require less skill because we dont have to correctly identify each stage of the procedure, we save time because it's "all in".

2. The Sugar Batter method requires the we cream the fat and sugar, we then add the pre-condition eggs followed by the dry ingredients and water last. This means we obtain aeration by creaming the fat and sugar, because the flour is added near the end of the mixing process we prevent over development of the gluten in the batter.

3. With the Blend method the dry ingredients are rubbed through with the fat. This coats the flour particles with a layer of fat which slows down the formation of gluten. In other words it prevents the proteins glutenin and gliadinen coming in to contact with the liquid and forming the tough, elastic rubbery mass we call gluten.

4. The Flour batter method developed in World War 2 enables us to produce a good quality cake by using less ingredients. We do however end up with twice as many dishes to wash!!

Another year and another group of enthusiastic young apprentices!

Well ok maybe I exaggerate just a tad, but you really do have lots to learn and I am hoping that your time spent with us here at Hamilton will be a pleasent one........so all those in my class make sure your uniforms are clean and pressed, your on time, your pre reading is done and you are ready to learn!


In the last few weeks we have had our induction, we learnt alot about the way Tafe works, what's required of us in this learning enviroment and alot about each other. Hopefully you are all getting along well and feeling more comfortable in class......


Remember the Rock Cakes? How much learning was involved in that simple task???


We talked about: Rubbing in, types of aeration, chemical aeration, function of ingredients and we practised the skill of dropping out..... who would have thought that there was so much to learn in the simple act of making a rock cake!


Can you remember the meaning of the terms I have just mentioned?

Nope?? Well have a look at the following link:


http://www.homebakingco.com/dictionary.htm#top%20of%20page


When you come to class next week I am going to ask you what these terms mean:

Aeration, emulsifers, all in, lipids, good manufacturing processes, convection ovens, types of flours used in our industry......

Conventional or Traditional Sponges

"Hmmm" we made sponges and we had some very interesting and varied results!Let's discuss briefly why the results in our products varied. There are two basic ways to produce a conventional sponge:

1) Warm Foaming.

2) Cold Foaming.

In the first method we warmed the eggs and sugar over a baire marie to 43 degrees celcius ensuring the sugar had completely dissolved.Why did we do this? This helps improve the emulsifying properties of the eggs, the warm eggs will aerate faster and create an emulsion which has greater stability. Remember if the eggs aerate faster we will also save time!

The cold foaming method only required us to pre-condition the eggs to 23 degrees celcius. We then aerated the eggs with the sugar. You should have noticed that this method takes a little longer for the eggs to reach the correct volume and consisitency. You will also have noticed that there is less stability in the egg foam because the mixture is cooler.

Why is it less stable when using the cold foaming method?

When we heat the eggs we change the nature of the protein in the eggs (De-nature), in other words we are encouraging the partial coagulation of the proteins and it is this which contributes to the greater stability in the egg foam.

Are you a little confused? Read the posting on proteins and coagulation, that should help, if you are still confused come and see me in class. Remember it takes a little time to learn something new!

What's wrong with that???

Well it won't be long before you will need to sit your faults exam and you should be getting pretty good at evaluating products by now. Besides giving yourself a pat on the back for the things you do well in class you need to reflect on what you didn't do well.... in other words ask yourself "what's wrong with that?"

When we talked in class we said that all cake faults could be put into 1 of 3 catergories:

1. Human Error. Examples of this are when we make a mistake when we weigh up or process the ingredients.
2. Calculation Error. The recipe ratio is not in balance, the ingredients are not in the correct amounts to produce a cake with out faults.
3. Ingredient Error or Flaw. The recipe uses the incorrect ingredient or there is a problem with the ingredient, for example we use bakers flour instead of hi ratio flour. Or another example would be we use Baking powder that is no longer as active because it has not been stored properly.

Understanding formula balance is important in the production of a cake without faults. Ingredients work in relation to each other, for example if we look at the four basic ingredients in a cake batter, fat, sugar, flour and eggs we would be able to break these up into several groups based on their function in the cake.

• Flour and eggs provide strength and structure to a cake because they contain proteins which coagulate when heat is applied.
• Eggs and fat are ingredients which help open the texture of a cake because they have the ability to hold or trap air with in the cake batter.
• Sugar helps to open the texture of a cake because it assists the aeration of the fat and eggs.
• Melted fat closes the texture of the cake and reduces lightness because it is a liquid.

Are you starting to understand how things work in together? Ask yourself the question if "I increase or decrease a particular ingredient what could I expect to happen" Try and predict the outcome......

Cake faults link

What causes a cake fault?
There are three main reasons for cake faults:

1. Human error
2. Calculation error
3. Ingredient error

Go to the following link you will be able to watch a short film on cake faults.

http://www.hunter.tafensw.edu.au/libraries/campuses/hamilton/cake_faults/cake-faults.htm

This is a great revision tool for the up and coming exam. Remember to be able to successfully identify a fault you need to be able to understand the function of the ingredients. Which ingredient causes a cake to rise? Which ingredients are responsible for the structure in the cake? What causes the texture to be closed or open in a cake.

Each time you look at a recipe you should ask yourself what the purpose of each ingredient is and how it contributes to the final product.