For this month's Stella Culinary Cooking Challenge, I wanted to get back to basics, focusing on a couple simple techniques, and reinforcing the skill set of separating flavor structure from technique.
When baking hamburger brioche buns or sandwich rolls, it's sometimes desirable to use a mold. This will allow the buns to rise individually and hold their shape throughout the baking process.
This is especially important when baking hamburger buns since any outward expansion during baking will result in a larger diameter than desired, throwing off your burger to bun ratio.
If you plan on making lots of hamburger buns on an ongoing basis, you may wish to opt for metal tart rings scaled to your desired diameter or a specialty brioche bun pan. This recommendation is meant more for a professional kitchen that will need to produce over 50 brioche buns on a daily basis. Although the tinfoil rings are re-usable, they will build up gunk and have a hard time keeping their shape for more than a few bakes, making a tart ring a more convenient approach.
However, if you're just casually dabbling with brioche buns, making the rings out of foil is incredibly simple, and doesn't take much time when only making a few. Add to this the versatility of being able size the ring to any diameter you want, and its clearly the best option for low production environments such as the home kitchen or restaurants that want to run a special.
Start by pulling out a sheet of tinfoil, about 14-16 inches in length, and laying it lengthwise on your work surface. Fold the bottom third upwards into the center and crease. Repeat with the top third, folding it down into the center, and creasing.
Continue this pattern of folding the bottom third up and the top third down, creasing as you go, until you're left with a strip of foil with a width of about 0.75 inches.
Make one final fold, folding the tinfoil strip in half horizontally and creasing firmly.
Measure the foil strip to the appropriate length, making a crease.
4.5" Hamburger Bun = 14.25 inches
4" Hamburger Bun = 12.75 inches
3" Slider Bun = 9.5 inches /
Place the long end of the foil strip inside the crease, and attach using two staples.
Gently pull the foil outward in a circular motion to form into a ring shape.
Spray ring with non-stick spray, place scaled dough inside, and allow to proof before baking.
You can create any size bun you wish just by knowing your desired diameter.
For example, if you want to make a 5" bun, you would multiply 5 inches (your diameter) time 3.14 (π). This will give you the circumference of the bun, which is also the length to which you need to measure your tinfoil strip.
5 X 3.14 = 15.7
However, while experimenting with various sized buns during the R&D phase of this project, I found that my diameter was always slightly smaller than I wanted by the time I formed the foil into a ring shape. This is because no matter how hard you try, you'll never be able to form a perfect circle.
This led me to start rounding the circumference up to the nearest quarter inch. So in the example above, 15.7 would become 15.75, or maybe even 16 inches.
I know it's not an exact science, but this will at least get you in the ball park, allowing you to adjust the overall circumference of your mold up and down as needed.
Also, in the Hamburger Brioche Bun Video (linked below), you'll notice that the vertical height of my molds are fairly deep, about .75 - 1 inch.
However, after further testing, I found that I actually prefer a more shallow mold, between .25 - .5 inches. This allows the mold enough depth to aid the bun in holding it's shape throughout proofing and baking process, but still allows for a more natural expansion during oven spring.
In this industry, we all stand on the shoulder's of giants. As we play with ideas, techniques, and flavors, we create fun and sometimes unique derivative works that open the door to new possibilities.
In their book Ideas in Food, Aki and Alex lay out a fun play on pork cracklins using kimchi pureed with tapioca starch instead of the standard pork skin. This mixture is cooked into a loose paste, spread thin on acetate sheets, and dehydrated. After about 24-48 hours, the resulting sheet will shatter like glass, and puff when dropped into hot oil. This concept works because even though the sheet seems completely dry, there's still a small amount of water trapped inside (about 4%).
When the dehydrated sheet is dropped in 400°F/204°C oil, the small amount of residual water quickly turns to steam, exploding outward, causing the starch gel to puff. The original Ideas in Food recipe used tapioca starch for it's bland flavor (so the kimchi could shine through), but this technique remains universal for any type of cooked, starchy puree that can be spread thin and dehydrated.
A few days ago, looking to add a crunchy texture and interesting flavor to an new dish, this idea popped back into my head. I wondered, why can't I use brown rice with the same approach? And since brown rice is a whole grain, shouldn't I be able to extract more flavor if I inoculated the soaking water with a sourdough culture and let it ferment a few days?
In fact, the approach turned out to be extremely simple. I took a teaspoon of sourdough starter and dissolved it in about three quarts of water. Brown rice was then submerged in this water, and left at room temperature to ferment.
Two days later I boiled the brown rice like pasta, purposely overcooking it so the starch granules would burst. It resulted in a goopy, sticky, brown rice "congee" that I first pureed in a food processor and then passed through a tamis (fine sieve).
As it started to cool, I could already see the starchy puree start to set. I whisked in a little warm water to loosen the mixture into a paste-like consistency, and spread it onto sheets of acetate cut to fit my dehydrator trays. The mixture was dehydrated overnight and broken into small pieces.
A simple dunk in 400°F/204°C oil for about 20 seconds causes the thin sheet of dehydrated brown rice to puff into an airy, crunchy 'cracklin.' While the texture is awesome, the flavor is truly the best part. The fermented brown rice cracklin has a deep, whole grain flavor with hints of popcorn and toasted wheat berries. Sprinkled with a little bit of kosher salt fresh from the fryer, these things quickly become addicting.
Now the possibilities are endless.
First, if the brown rice is simply covered with water and allowed to ferment at room temperature for 3-5 days (instead of inoculating with a sourdough starter), this could turn into a healthy snack for people suffering from celiacs. In fact, the fermentation step isn't even necessary, although I would argue the end flavor is better.
Second, the brown rice can be cooked in any number of flavored liquids, and the resulting puree can easily absorb other seasoning or ingredients in the form of spices, liquids, purees, etc. The only limitation is the mixture needs to be extremely low in fat, or it won't dehydrate properly.
Finally, this can be applied to any number of high starch mixtures, not just brown rice and tapioca starch. And in fact, it has. If anyone has ever eaten a Cheeto, Bugle, or a bowl of Rice Krispies for that matter, you've experienced first hand the textures this technique can create.
Like I said...we all stand on the shoulder's of giants.
This article is part 2 of 2. Read part one here: What Is A Preferment?
Various Types of Preferments
Preferments can go by many different names including chef, levain, sponge, madre bianca, mother, biga and poolish. But in my opinion, there are three major approaches to preferments that will encompass all others, much like classic French sauces are mostly derivatives from the Five French Mother Sauces. To help you better understand the three major approaches to preferments, I give you the “Three Mother Preferments” (somewhere out there, a French Baker just face palmed himself, and my life is now complete). These three “mother preferments” are poolish, biga and pâte fermentée.
Poolish Preferment
Sometimes referred to as a sponge or barm (although a barm is more technically a natural levain or sourdough starter), tradition has it that the term “Poolish” comes from Polish baker’s in Vienna who developed the technique of prefermentation, later adopted by French bakers. And although I’m always eager to annoy French baker’s and chefs, there really is no solid, historical evidence of where the term “poolish” originated.
What we can agree on however is the poolish style preferment is the most common approach used by enthusiasts and professional bakers alike, mainly because it’s high hydration allows the yeast to propagate at a constant pace, and it’s incredibly easy to apply a preferment to any bread recipe since it contains a 1:1 ratio of flour and water (which makes final bread dough calculations intuitive, especially when converting various bread recipes that don’t utilize a preferment).
Based on the baker’s percentage, a poolish starter will have 100% hydration and .2% yeast (always based on the flour’s weight).
This means the basic formulation for a poolish preferment is:
500g Flour - 100%
500g Water - 100%
1g Yeast* - 0.2% (either active or instant dry)
*Because cake yeast (commonly only found in professional bakeries) is less dense with yeast microbes than active or instant dry, you can up the percentage to 1% to get the same results.
Now I do realize this seems like a lot of preferment for the home baker, and it is, but using these numbers you can at least visualize the ratios through the baker’s percentage. If you want to make a smaller poolish preferment and don’t have a gram scale accurate to the 10th of a gram, then a simple, one finger pinch of yeast will do. For example, if I was making a preferment for one or two loaves of bread, it would probably look something like this:
200g Flour
200g Water
Pinch Yeast
Once mixed, a poolish style preferment will be ready to use in about 12-18 hours, assuming an ambient room temperature of 68-72°F/20-22°C and your yeast usage doesn’t exceed .2% based on the flour’s weight. Remember, the more yeast used and the hotter your room temperature, the sooner your preferment will be ready (which isn’t necessarily desirable since the whole purpose of a preferment is to slow down the fermentation process). For every 17°F/9°C your room temperature raises or drops, the yeast activity will be doubled or cut in half, taking the yeast half the time or twice the time respectively to achieve the same amount of fermentation.
For more information on incorporating a poolish style preferment into your bread doughs, please see “The Basics of Using a Preferment” at the end of this article.
Biga Preferment
This style of preferment was developed by Italian bakers, and in Italy, a Biga refers to any style of preferment that contains flour, water and yeast, no matter the percentages. However, it’s more common for a Biga to have less hydration than a poolish. For the sake of understanding various approaches to preferments, Biga’s are low hydration (stiffer) and take longer to finish fermentation as compared to a poolish containing the same percentage of yeast. This is because yeast’s movement is impeded by lower hydrations, taking them longer to propagate and consume all the starches contained within the bread dough.
This is why Biga Preferments will usually, but not always, contain more yeast based upon the flour’s rate (about 1%) than a wetter style of preferment like a poolish. At the one percent use rate, a biga preferment left at a standard room temperature will be ready to use in about 14-18 hours. The basic formulation for a biga starter is:
500g Flour - 100%
300g Water - 60%
5g Yeast - 1%
While this is a common formulation for a biga starter, the yeast percentage and hydration rate can vary depending on the baker and the final application of the preferment. However, in the spirit of separate approaches, low hydration starters will take longer to ferment than a poolish, which is why the yeast percent is raised to 1% for the former instead of .2% for the latter.
Anecdotally speaking, this stiffer dough can stand up to longer fermentation times, especially if the yeast percent is lowered, creating more complex flavors via acetic and latic acid production, the same acids responsible for sourdough’s complex flavor and aroma.
Once a biga preferment is airy and full of life (and expanded by about double it’s original volume), it can then be incorporated into the final dough formulation by cutting into small pieces, mixed with the rest of the recipe’s liquid, and then incorporated into the remaining ingredients. This will ensure an even dispersion of yeast contained in the preferment, resulting in better bulk fermentation and proofing.
Pâte Fermentée (Chef, Old Dough)
The “old dough” or pâte fermentée style of preferment is extremely convenient if you’re baking the same bread recipe on a regular basis. This approach was championed by famed French baker Raymond Cavell who credited this method with adding complexity of flavor and increased oven spring to his world famous baguettes.
The basic concept is simple; up to 1/3 of bread dough is reserved after the bulk fermentation to levin the next batch of bread. So in the case of a classic baguette, the first time the recipe is made, flour, water, yeast, and salt will be mixed together and allowed to bulk ferment.
After the bulk fermentation is complete, the dough is punched down, one third is reserved to levin the next batch of bread, while the rest of the dough is scaled, formed, proofed, and baked.
This old dough can be stored for about 8-12 hours at room temperature or retarded in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. It can also be frozen for up to 6 months, removing from the freezer and allowing to thaw fully (about 12-16 hours at room temperature, (24-36 hours in the fridge depending on the dough's volume) before using it to levin a batch of bread.
The Basics of Using a Preferment
Now that you understand what a preferment is, why they’re beneficial to bread baking, and the three major approaches, let’s talk about how to actually apply this knowledge to any bread recipe.
In general, 1/4 to 1/2 of a bread recipe’s total flour will be used to create a preferment. The amount of liquid depends entirely on what approach you’re using from above (low hydration biga, high hydration poolish, or pâte fermentée).
The amount of pre-ferment used will depend on how long you want the bulk fermentation process to take, after it's incorporated into the the rest of the ingredients. In general, when half of the dough's flour comes from a preferment, you can count on a 2-4 hour bulk fermentation and a 1-2 hour proof.
Let's use our basic baguette recipe to put this into perspective:
800g Flour - 100%
520g Water (Warm) - 65%
7g Yeast (Active Dry) - .8% Yeast
16g Salt - 2% Salt
The original recipe uses the direct method, meaning the ingredients are mixed together, allowed to bulk ferment, shaped, proofed and baked (scalable recipe - video recipe).
To add extra complexity of flavor, we’ll remove half of the recipe’s flour and create a poolish style preferment, transforming our recipe into something like this:
Preferment
400g Flour
400g Water
Pinch Yeast
Mix ingredients together, place in a container large enough to allow the preferment to at least double in size, and allow to ferment at room temperature (68-72°F/20-22°C) for 12-16 hours (or retard in fridge for up to 3 days).
The next day, mix the preferment with the remaining ingredients:
400g Flour
120g Water
16g Salt
Follow the baguette recipe as normal. Remember, your bulk fermentation and proofing stages might take a little longer than normal, about 3 and 2 hours respectively, but your patience will be rewarded with a superior baguette. Obviously the fermentation can be delayed further by using less preferment, retarding the bread during bulk fermentation or proofing, or all of the above. Again, the longer the fermentation and proofing process, the more complex the bread will be, until the yeast consume all the available food, causing them to die.
To convert the above baguette recipe for use with a biga style starter:
400g Flour
240g Water - (400 X .6 = 240g or 60% Hydration)
4g Yeast - (400 X .01 = 4g or 1%)
Mix ingredients together until they form a shaggy dough. Leave at room temperature and allow to ferment for 14-18 hours (or retard in fridge for up to 3 days).
The next day, mix with:
400g Flour
280g Water
16g Salt
Once ingredients are kneaded together, follow the baguette recipe as normal, with the expectation of your bulk ferment and proofing stages taking a little longer.
To use the pâte fermentée method, you can simply reserve 1/3 of the baguette dough recipe, but this will also decrease the overalll yield. If you want to have the same yield every time (4 baguettes), then scale each ingredient by 1.5. For example, our above baguette recipe adds up to 1336g total dough weight. Here's how the math looks
800g X 1.5 = 1200g Flour
520g X 1.5 = 780g Water
16g X 1.5 = 24g Salt
7g X 1.5 = 10.5 Yeast
_____________________________________
1336g X 1.5 = 2004g Total Dough Weight
2004 X .3 = 668 (this is the amount pate fermente you must remove and save for the next batch).
668 X 2 - 1336
So as you can see from the above example, scaling any bread recipe by 1.5 will allow you to remove 30% of the dough to be used as a preferment in your next batch, while resulting in the same total yield from bake to bake. Even though 1/3 is technically 33%, scaling a recipe by 1.5 and then removing .3 is easy to remember, keeps your numbers round, and the extra 3% is negligible.
The portion of the dough removed can be stored at room temperature if you plan on baking the same bread in the next 12-18 hours, in the fridge up to 3 days, or the freezer for up to 6 months.
The final baguette recipe would be:
668g Pâte Fermentée (Old Dough)
800g Flour
520g Water
16g Salt
Yeast - Optional, depending on how fast you want the bread to rise, or how avtive your old dough looks. If it's a little past it's prime or you want a faster, more dependable rise, add 7g of yeast.
You might also be interested in the following:
Podcast Episodes
Videos - Visit Our Bread Baking Video Index
The Baker's Percentage - Learn how baker's calculate bread recipes and ratios. This is crucial for understanding how preferments are formulated.
Preferments leverage one simple fact; longer and slower bulk fermentation and proofing stages make for better bread. This is accomplished by taking a portion of a bread recipe’s flour and liquid, “spiking” with a very small amount of yeast, and allowing this mixture to ferment at room temperature over the course of 12-18 hours, and sometimes as long as a few days if retarded under refrigeration.
Using a preferment would fall under the classification of the “in-direct method,” because there’s an intermediate step between the mixing of ingredients and bulk fermentation. Just like we discussed in Episode 20, “The Classifications of Bread,” the in-direct method slows down fermentation by the utilizing preferments or retarding doughs during the bulk fermentation process, resulting in a more complex, flavorful bread.
This is opposed to most modern bread recipes formulated for many cooks who tend to prize convenience over flavor. Most recipes use large amounts of yeast which allow you to bulk ferment the bread dough in two hours and proof in less than one. And while these recipes will still produce fresh baked bread that will fill your house with beautiful aromas and have a quality that easily rivals the soulless, pre-sliced, baked-batters found at your local supermarket, it will be no where near the quality which can be achieved through delayed fermentation.
“But Jacob, it takes so long to bake bread using a pre-ferment!”
No, not really. In fact, the actual time you spend mixing the dough doesn’t change. The only thing that changes is the passive time required to do a pre-ferment, meaning having the foresight to mix a portion of the flour and water a day or two in advanced before baking bread.
What the argument really comes down to is planning ahead. In fact, I’ve gotten many negative YouTube comments on my bread baking videos, all which say pretty much the same thing: “This takes too much time, it’s too involved, that’s what supermarkets are for, etc.”
If that’s your mind set, than I’d venture to guess you’re in the majority, simply based on the complete saturation of “quick, easy, simple, 30 minutes or less,” recipe books and TV shows. And please don’t get me wrong; there’s nothing wrong with quick and easy recipes, but the approach isn’t universal to all forms of the culinary arts.
There is no quick and easy approach to charcuterie, the fermentation of grapes into world class wine, and the baking of great bread. But then the people who pursue these subjects aren’t worried about quick and easy, because our reward comes to us during the process, with the finished product being the tangible expression of the journey, which true cooks cherish above the destination.
If you’re not willing to plan ahead, then preferments and baking great bread aren’t for. But if you’re willing to be patient and draw the process out over the course of a couple of days, the use of a preferment or “natural levain” (i.e. sourdough starter), will instantly elevate the quality of your breads.
Why Use a Preferment?
Because fermentation is extended, the yeast and natural enzymes present in flour have time to take action on the starches and proteins in the dough, releasing a larger amount of food supply for the yeast to ingest and turn into energy. This has a couple of distinct benefits:
It tastes better. The general rule of thumb is the longer the bread is allowed to ferment, the more complex and delicious the finished flavors will be. This does have a law of diminishing returns however; any preferment older than 3 days that hasn’t been refreshed with fresh flour and water is likely to have a weak and dying yeast population which can give your bread off flavors and poor rising ability.
Preferments add extensibility to bread doughs, making them easier to form, and resulting in a superior oven spring. In fact, preferments have been shown to increase the oven spring of baguettes by as much as 10%, which results in an airier, lighter crumb.
Are you convinced you need a preferment in you're baking arsenal? Then get started by reading our guide "The Three Mother Preferments and How To Use Them." We also cover this topic extensively in The Stella Culinary School Podcast Episode 21| Sourdough Starters and Preferments.
You might also be interested in the following:
Podcast Episodes
Videos - Visit Our Bread Baking Video Index
The Baker's Percentage - Learn how baker's calculate bread recipes and ratios. This is crucial for understanding how preferments are formulated.
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by Zalbar
Apprentice. Journeyman. Master. Not only are they a measure of a craftsman’s skill, they are also an institutionalized methods of learning. The apprentice learns first through observation, then by mimicking and practice, and finally having mastered one thing, moves on to the next. This method of teaching our craft has existed for hundreds of years and continues to this day. Even the greats of my generation learnt how to cook this way. These traditions are a way of life. A means of passing on the accumulated knowledge of the ages to the next generation so that they can take up their banner and replace them. Much as a proud father and mother pass the torch to their sons and daughters. The problem with this type of learning is that due to the very rigid and structured nature, questioning and innovation are not encouraged. Why do we do something in a particular way? Because it has always been done this way, and always will be. Through repetition and rote. Do not question, do not deviate. One omelette, two omelettes, three hundred omelettes.
Traditionalists abound, and even the younger ones will defend the old guard to their dying breath. This is very european. Their veneration for tradition is ingrained into their very bones. It’s one of the things that I think is a marked difference between european and american cooks. American cooks are more willing to experiment, to try new things. They have not been indoctrinated into the same culinary traditions. When european cooks come across the pond to america, they form their own culinary and cultural enclaves. Their bastions of tradition standing against the tides of change. Many american chefs send their cooks off to europe. They are told, go travel, go eat, go cook. I have not once met a cook that has come back that has not been changed by their journey. They spend time over there, and their experiences transform their food. However their cooking is influenced and inspired by, instead of taken over.
I’m not going to claim that one way is better than the other, I don’t believe that. I’m not going to say we should stereotype american and european cooks either. El Bulli in spain was probably the pinnacle of culinary innovation and I suspect they will continue to be so once they reopen in 2014. Personally, I’m more of a traditionalist and don’t really enjoy a lot of the culinary experiments that are taking place, but I respect them. Everything has it’s place, and the next whacked out sous-vide-liquid nitrogen-xanthan gum-spherical-tomato water-ice cream-wafer sprinkle flake may become as common as chopped basil in the future. Who knows.
What brought this all up was when I observed some rather heated discussions going on about poaching steak (for the hell of it apparently), using sous-vide, and new versus traditional methods. One chef even tossing out “So one steak is cooked three times and chilled twice in zip lock bags before you put it on my plate? What has happened to real cooking?” It was quite the discussion. Both sides had their points, but some of the closed mindedness was unsettling in the least. Funnily enough it wasn’t the old guard that were being so closed minded, they just stated their opinion and left it at that. It was their younger proteges that seemed to be the most vehemently vocal, railing against the fuzzy wrong headedness of their colleagues deigning to experiment with callous aloofness to tradition. I’ve seen this same attitude with bakers and no-knead bread. It is not bread they claim. There is no depth of flavor. No kneading? No art. Ridiculous. Never. You. Are. Wrong.
Following this, I could not stop thinking about how we grow and learn in this craft, this passion of ours. How we pass on our knowledge. Which I believe is a responsability and a duty for anyone with an interest in cooking. How things change over time. How very wrong it is to dismiss anything as it is stifling progress. It is limiting innovation. If at first you don’t succeed try, try again. While some may decry the innovators of the time, eventually some of those practices become a part of our culinary heritage.
Been shooting lots of video this past week for our Stella Bread Series that will supplement some of our upcoming audio lectures. This is a 70% hydration boule with about 10% whole wheat and leavened with a sourdough starter. The video turned out great, the bread was AWESOME, but first, we need to get through two more audio lectures to lay a nice foundation. Sorry to be such a tease!
LOST IN TRANSLATION
by Zalbar
Introduction
When I was asked to explain the whole saute pan versus frying pan issue it seemed at first to be a rather simple thing. However, the topic itself raised a whole other series of questions for me. Why are there so many french terms used in english speaking kitchens? Why do we even use them instead of our own unique words? What led to french labels and techniques dominating the globe and spreading as far and as wide as it does today? Subsequent Lost In Translation articles will explore the culinary history and evolution of french cooking as well as it’s impact on cuisines around the world. However, let’s first look at the subject that kicked off this series of articles. The saute, sauteuse and sautoir.
PART I
~ Saute, Sauteuse, Sautoir ~
The kitchen, both domestic and commercial, is littered with french terminology and for good reason. It is the french that set out in print the what, when, where and how of modern culinary practices and techniques in use today. It was the french chefs who were hired by other countries royalty and upper class houses to prepare lavish banquets and feasts. Their methods and terminology have stood the test of time and endured throughout the ages. History as well as several major societal and cultural upheavals are what has birthed one of the dominating and most influential cuisines to leave it’s imprint upon the globe.This is not to say that there are not also a goodly number of culinary texts and traditions from other countries that have endured as well, however, french cuisine stands apart as being recognized at either extreme of the dining experience. On the one hand it is almost art with it’s small complicated towering mounds of delicately sauced and perfectly cooked morsels of food. They flood the palate with undulating waves and layers of flavour and texture, each more exquisitely satisfying than the next. On the other hand it is also renowned for being a culinary pioneer of down to earth, rustic and heart warming comfort food using every scrap of an animal or vegetable. While most of us would snap our asparagus in half, blanch and eat the top part, the french would calmly retrieve the discarded stems, peel them, and show you the wonderfully tender shoots hidden beneath. To use a euphemism of my own making, the french dive deep in both ends of the culinary pool.
The english saute pan is derived from the french pan called a sautoir. A noun, a thing. The word saute can also be used as a verb, an action. Our problem is that we tend to borrow some terms and ignore others as well as the meaning behind the word and thus lose the comprehension of everything else similar that surrounds it.
In french, to saute something merely means to fry ingredients with a little fat over high heat. That is the complete definition right there, nothing more, nothing less. The word saute itself literally means jump. I’m sure this is not new to anyone, and everyone has read this explanation or heard it somewhere. What most of us fail to grasp is the actual meaning behind the word. The jumping is in reference to the action of ingredients in hot oil but can also refer to the sauteing technique of tossing food rapidly into the air. What type of pan you use determines the method of sauteing that is most applicable.
The sautoir is a wide shallow pan with straight sides, what is also termed a saute pan in english. Sauteing in this is what we would normally call pan frying. As water escapes the ingredients, due to heating, it jumps and bounces in the pan. It sautes. Think of how you cook a steak on the stove-top. High heat and a bit of oil in the pan and away we go. A few minutes on either side and then off to rest before plating and eating. There is no tossing of the food in the air. We are not swinging the pan around like we’re sifting for gold. Yes, this is still sauteing food to the french. Remember, high heat and a small amount of fat. That is the only qualification to be considered for sauteing an ingredient.
The sauteuse is a long handled bowl shaped pan. If you took a big cereal bowl and put a long handle on it you wouldn’t be all that far off. We would use small pieces of meat or vegetable, often times both at once, with the saute method of rapidly tossing the items in the air to achieve browning on all sides. This is what we are most familiar with when we use the term saute.
Another similarly misunderstood word is deglaze or deglacer. Glace. Demi-Glace. Glace de viande. These are all terms we have heard before. Most people know that glace is the french word for ice. If we deglaze the pan and make a pan sauce we call this in french, saute-deglace. But to understand it in culinary terms as the french use it we have to look at it’s meaning. For example glace de viande, which is really concentrated and reduced brown stock or sauce, would translate literally as meat ice. I know, it doesn’t sound very appetizing, but there it is. It also doesn’t really make much sense in english. Glace, where we get our word glaze from, doesn’t only mean ice, as in frozen water. It is referring to the whole process of cooling or heating something so that it thickens. If anyone has ever seen the rubber hockey pucks that are glace de viande, you are probably now getting an inkling of the true meaning of the word glace. Deglace where instead of glacing or glazing something till it thickens to the proper consistency such as in barbecue ribs, we are doing the reverse. The fond or solids, this glace, left in the pan becomes liquid. We deglace or deice them. Another way to say it it is that we un-ice it, we melt it.
All this rambling is to point out what I meant by understanding the cultural and contextual meaning behind a word or phrase. Especially a foreign phrase, and to not use it rote or off the cuff. Why the words mean what they do is very important. If you asked someone how their boyfriend or girlfriend was and got the response “They rock my world.” You would understand. Trying to explain that to someone in a literate sense that only speaks italian, for example, would be almost impossible. Literal translations simply do not work. You have to get at the significance of the phrase to truly relay it’s meaning. This is the most important lesson to take away from this whole article and not just the meaning behind the saute pan and the saute method.
The weird dichotomy of the whole saute, sauteuse, and sautoir thing though is that, if you step into any non-traditionally french kitchen and ask for a saute pan what you’ll most likely be handed is a sauteuse, and if you buy a saute pan what you’ll get is a sautoir. Most pans you see stacked up and used in kitchens and on the burners are simply frying pans or poeles which we define as a flat shallow curved sided pan. We most often use the saute method with them, but they are neither a sauteuse or a sautoir. Ironically, one cannot saute food, in an english kitchen, in a saute pan.
~Zalbar
