One of these days, you won't be so lucky.

You will be collecting wild mushrooms, minding your own business, when a ground of K-pop loving marauders come storming through the meadows, and next thing you know, you will have a gun to your head as they make you swear allegiance to some immortal Korean vampire person.

I trust you know your way around a knife and can dispatch them quickly, but sometimes, peace is a better option than war. In times like these, you can reach into your spice belt and give them a commodity that is more precious that is only reserved to the best of the apocalyptic chefs: a pastry! With this bargaining chip, you can easily get away from any sticky situation.

For you see, if cooking is an art, and baking is science, pastries are an esoteric, almost religious mastery that only some are wise enough to even attempt to be moderately good at. It is not uncommon for pastry chefs around the world to ask Saint Honoré, patron saint of pastries, for his blessing before any baking endeavor. Always make sure to keep a picture of him on you at all times. If you don't have one, don't worry: here is one you can keep.



You see, unlike baking, which, as long as you make your calculations nothing should go terribly wrong, pastry making has a much less lenient margin of error. A gram extra of an ingredient can modify a recipe and turn it into something else. Something...wicked.

But worry not! For we are resourceful, apocalyptic chefs. Take a knee, make a prayer to Saint Honoré, and let's get into the world of pastry!

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO PASTRY

Much like baking, pastry-making is the art of confections, mostly based on sugar. They use the same base ingredients as breads, but in different proportions and uses.

Flour:

It is the one that provides structure and helps unite the other ingredients. The flour must be soft, that is, that its tightness does not develop when it is mixing. As such, we stray away from the hard flours, and use flours like all-purpose.

It is convenient that this flour has a protein percentage between 7% and 9% with an ash content between 0.34 and 0.38. The flours made from this wheat are soft to the touch, they compact easily when squeezed with the hands, they do not run, and they powder easily. The finer the grit, the better.

Yeasts:

Unlike breads, we use softer leavening agents, mostly because the flours we use is not strong enough to retain the yeast farts. We use chemical leaveners instead.

Baking Soda/ Sodium bicarbonate: It is a salt with good leavening power. Baking soda is a mineral compound that, when combined with something acidic, creates carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide creates vas bubbles that help the mixtures rise. Baking soda is commonly used in recipes that contain acidic ingredients like buttermilk, brown sugar, yogurt, lemon juice, vinegar, cream of tartar, applesauce, natural cocoa powder, honey, or molasses. Baking soda helps the end product rise and have a crispier texture.

Baking powder: Unlike baking soda, which consists of a simple ingredient, baking powder is a mixture of baking soda and cream of tartar, a dry aci. An inactive ingredient, often cornstarch, prevents the two from reacting until liquid is added. The addition of cream of tartar adds acidity to recipes that do not require acidic ingredients. It's also worth noting that since baking powder is a mixture of ingredients, it is slightly less potent teaspoon by teaspoon than baking soda.

When liquid is added, the baking soda and acid in the cream of tartar combine to produce carbon dioxide. Because this reaction starts right away, it's important to bake these mixtures right after adding the liquid. Most baking powders sold today are double-acting, meaning they work once they are added to the wet ingredients, and then they yeast again when they are put in in the oven and exposed to heat.

Cream of tartar (potassium bitartrate or potassium acid tartrate): This derivative of the winemaking process serves to prevent the crystallization of sugar, increase the volume of mixtures, and stabilize egg whites.

Sugar:

Pastries are characterized by their sweet flavor, which comes mainly from sugars, carbohydrates and sweeteners. These substances give tenderness and finesse to the mixtures, give color to the crusts, and act as creaming agents. They extend the life of baked goods, as they retain moisture. Although there are numerous types of sugars, the most widely used is sucrose or common sugar, a disaccharide whose molecule is made of glucose and fructose.

The presence of other sugars, such as lactose (milk sugar) and fructose (present in honey), are common in pastriez.

Some presentations of sucrose are:

Common sugar: It is extracted from sugar cane or sugar beets and packed once refined and ground. It should be white, with the beans separated. In recipes, it is simply mentioned as sugar. Keep some on your pocket to throw at enemies' eyes.

Powdered sugar: It is also known as icing sugar, powdered sugar or flower sugar. It is ordinary sugar reduced to powder. Common sugar and powdered sugar can be interchangeable.

Brown sugar: This semi-refined by-product is named for its golden coloration. Its flavor is detected by a certain acid note. It can be used like the previous ones.

Black sugar: It is obtained from cane juice with little treatment. It is dark in color and very moist  with a fully wild and acid flavor.

Fats, milks, and Eggs:

These, unlike water, are usually the main source of moisture in pastries. Since they have unique and interesting protein compositions. Since we have spoken to them to death, I'm not going to explain further. We have better things to do.

BASIC OF PASTRY-MAKING

WHIPPED PASTRIES, LIKE CAKE AND STUFF:

They are pastries with a significant amount of air that have been incorporated by the continuous agitation of eggs and sugar. As a general rule, they are worked with a whisk to make them fluffy, with this it is intended to increase the volume incorporating a maximum of bubbles, and this amount of bubbles is what makes the mixes light and airy. By a dilation of the numerous bubbles that increase the volume when heated,  dough swells.

SHORTCRUST PASTRIES (not actually short):

Set of pastries that are characterized by its more or less friable structure and by the absence of body in them. They smol and thicc, but not short. They are very sensitive about that.

To make them, it is necessary to take some precautions: you must work and knead as little as possible, since we want them to crumble. To obtain the crumbliness that characterizes these pastries, we have two methods: By sablage (mixture of fat and flour), or a cream (mixture of fat and sugar).

The purpose of the sablage is to isolate and waterproof the flour particles by wrapping a thin film of grease before it comes into contact with the liquid hydration. For this reason the hydration liquid of the dough does not penetrate deeply in the starch and gluten cells, which prevents prolonged kneading, and the development of gluten creates a lacks elasticity, making it a crumbly dough.

MERINGUES:

A meringue is nothing more than egg whites whipped to a stiff peak, dried with sugar. The sugar and egg white proportions can be memorized according to a simple formula: 3 tablespoons of of sugar are added for each egg white. The whites are beaten to the point of stiff peaks with sugar and dried in the oven at low temperature.

CHOUX PASTRY (pronounced shoo):

Originally, this dough was prepared with potatoes cooked in water and adding eggs, then they were crushed to make croquettes that looked like cabbages (choux) when cooked in the oven. This was known as clinical depression.

This mass of potatoes and eggs has been replaced by a white sauce or paste that incorporates eggs and was perfected back in the year 1760 by a pastry chef named Avice. It is a base dough with which you can prepare different cakes, and generally filled with various creams and then glazed with syrup, sugar, fondant or chocolate. Doughnuts. I'm talking about doughnuts.

PIE CRUST:

This dough is called brisee dough, and its formula is 1-2-3. So simple that you can't fuck it up, as it is one part sugar, two parts margarine or raw fat, and three parts flour. The greater the amount of fat in relation to the flour, the more brittle is the dough. Eggs or liquid are not necessary, they can be added but they only serve to tie the dough and make it more easily bonded.

Everything in pastry-making can be chalked to those simple basic products. There are different processes, temperatures, ingredients, and so on, but we can classify them as such, and have similar techniques amongst them.

But enough talk. Time to make some basic pastry products!