It is a fairly well accepted fact that I like to bake. While this hasn't always been true, enough evidence has amassed over the past three years or so to be tolerably convincing. So, when it was decided I would be living between the lands of really awesome chocolate and really awesome desserts, I was assured my baking would never be the same. Imagine what it will be like, they told me, baking with Swiss chocolate and French butter.Well, they got part of it right--my baking is not the same.
Warning: serious baking geek-out session follows.
Ovens: European ovens are tiny. And they only come with one rack. Apparently, the need to have two cakes in the oven simultaneously is not a common one for the home baker here.
Okay, so it probably isn't. Still, I do it, and the issue with tiny ovens is that your baked good is a whole lot closer to the sides and heating elements. This means the temperature gradient is larger and your cakes or cookies or whatnot don't bake as evenly. I have had cakes that were developing a terrible crust on the top while still raw underneath because they sat too high, or with a baked sides and bottom that were pushing the remaining raw batter into a weird cone in the middle of the cake because the cake sat too low. Trying to get two somewhat matching cake layers involves a great deal of shifting hot pans of half-baked batter in an attempt to ensure even torturing and me pleading with the powers that watch over burgeoning cake-bakers that all the temperature changes don't make the cakes fall.
Milk: French grocery stores all have an aisle of unrefrigerated shelves devoted to milk. Yes, unrefrigerated. Apparently, if you pasteurize milk thoroughly enough, it does not need refrigeration until after being opened.
I found this a bit disturbing. I typically stick with the not-quite-so-pasteurized stuff that needs to be kept cold and is more familiar. I still think the pasteurization procedure is different here, because either type of milk doesn't clabber the way I'm used to. This matters because . . .
Buttermilk: Cultured buttermilk is not to be found in my local French grocery stores. They have fermented milk, and lots of yogurt and creme fraiche containing bacteria cultures that I could probably thin down and use. But cultured buttermilk is not to be had.
Butter: Ah, butter, the glory and starting point of so much of French cuisine. Yes, this is different here, too. There are several types of bacteria that love milk, and these give us yogurt, cheese, buttermilk, and lots of other great things. Butter made from cream that has been cultured has a different flavor than butter made from un-cultured ("sweet") cream. Some say the buttery flavor is stronger in cultured butter. I have not noticed a difference in cakes and cookies. I do think this butter melts differently, though. I blame this difference for why my buttermilk biscuits, which involve melted butter, keep baking up into fat buttermilk pancakes.
Eggs: They're brown. This doesn't impact baking in the slightest. But it looks different. I would say it makes decorating eggs for Easter less colorful, except around Easter you can buy already colored eggs in every technicolor of the rainbow.
Shortening: Yes, I bake with shortening. It makes cookies that stay soft, frosting that holds its shape without melting, and cake pans release cakes in one piece without a hassle.
The French, however, do not bake with shortening. I am not surprised--it does not seem a very French thing to do. So I haven't been able to find it while I've been here, and I should change my phrase to "I baked with shortening" (no conversion or change of opinion is implied by the past tense). I have been told it does exist in France, though not the Crisco I am familiar with. The shortening here is apparently harder and not as malleable.
Margarine, while French, is not an acceptable substitute.
Extracts: Vanilla extract is almost as much a staple of French baking as in American, so it is not hard to find. Luckily for me, neither is my beloved almond extract, though mint and orange take a little more hunting. However, French extracts are not like American extracts. Extracts available in the US are alcohol-based; in fact, I'm told you can make your own vanilla extract by placing vanilla bean pods in rum or vodka. I'm not positive my interpretation is correct, but from my perusing of ingredient labels on French extracts I believe they use some sort of sugar syrup as a base. While it doesn't look the same, it still flavors baked goods well, and I am not picky enough to notice a difference.
On a side note, real vanilla beans are easy to find here, which opens up a new realm of dessert-making fun, even if I don't think vanilla beans can be used in cakes.
Chocolate: Swiss chocolate makes it clear that people in the US are letting themselves get cheated. Even the cheapest candy bar for tastebudless toddlers here is swathed in a thin shell of milk chocolate that can steal your breath with its rich taste and texture. The chocolate here contains more actual cocoa butter and is processed longer to give it a smoother texture. For eating by itself, Swiss chocolate makes American candy look like tawdry pretenders.
The first difference for the baker is that unsweetened chocolate bars, a cornerstone for Americans baking with chocolate, are only sold in the (rare) specialty baking stores in France or Switzerland. I haven't been able to find such a store, because if I had I would not still be trying to purchase a 24 cm, removable bottom, fluted edge, non-stick tart pan without importing it from the US. But you can buy very, very dark chocolate for baking (Lindt makes some in the 85% cocoa range), so you can substitute that and decrease the sugar in the recipe a bit. That way, you also benefit from the extra processing and resultant smoothness dark chocolate has over unsweetened, a benefit for things like mousse.
The other differences are related to American chocolate having less cocoa butter and some waxy replacement instead. The waxy replacement is stable at higher temperatures than normal cocoa butter. This is why melting American chocolate chips doesn't produced as smooth a liquid chocolate as melting chocolate bars; the chips have extra waxy stuff to help them hold their shape while baking. This also means that if you chop up a Swiss chocolate bar to use in your chocolate chip cookies (because chocolate chips are not particularly common), know that the chocolate is going to melt, start to flow out on your cookie sheet, and may possibly burn. Smores are also going to be extra messy with Swiss chocolate.
Swiss chocolate is also more touchy than American baking chocolate. Be extra careful not to offend the stuff while melting it, otherwise it might seize. Nothing is sadder than a greasy congealed mass of more than 200 grams of Lindt dark chocolate that was supposed to be a luscious shiny ganache to cover your birthday cake.
That is . . . er, was chocolate.Dutch-processed cocoa has been processed with alkaline to get rid of the acidity. This yields a darker, almost purple-toned powder. Some say it has a milder flavor, as it lacks the acidic kick. Personally, I prefer Dutch-processed cocoa for hot chocolate and frosting and dusting cakes, and many specialty cakes recipes specifically call for dutched cocoa. However, in the US, you can only find dutched cocoa in specialty food stores and through mail-order providers. The closest I've seen in a big chain store is Hershey's special dark cocoa, which has some percentage (my guess is less than half) of dutched cocoa mixed into natural cocoa powder. If the packaging doesn't say explicitly, read the ingredient labels to see if an alkalinizing agent has been listed (this is a good idea anway, because if sugar or dried milk is listed, you're holding a canister of drink mix, not baking cocoa; I've made that mistake). However, all of the cocoa powder available at grocery stores in Europe appears to be dutched, so I have had great fun playing with recipes for which I didn't have the correct cocoa before.
Can you interchange the two? Yes, with caveats. The flavor is going to be different, particularly if the recipe calls for 1/2 cup or more of cocoa, but it will probably be a matter of personal preference which you like better. The texture is also going to change, which may or may not be a minor problem. Baking soda needs an acid to make baked goods rise, while baking powder does not. Thus is your recipe calls for baking powder and cocoa, it is still going to rise when you switch cocoas. If your recipe calls for baking sode and another major source of acidity like buttermilk or vinegar, the texture change is probably not going to be a major problem. If your recipe calls for baking soda and the cocoa is the only acidic ingredient, like my favorite chocolate cookie recipe, the texture is NOT going to be the same. I believe the fix would be to swap the baking soda for about three times as much baking powder. I'll tell you what happens when I attempt that in my next batch of chocolate cookies.
Flour: I have decided flour doesn't get nearly enough credit for what it does in baked goods. Flour is responsible for the shape and structure of whatever you make. The webby texture of a good baguette? Flour. The flexibility of a rising cream puff? Flour. The fine crumb of a good cake? Flour. The amount and type of flour determines it all. Flour contains the proteins that determine the structure of whatever it is you bake. As you mix, stir, or knead your to-be-baked goods, the proteins change structure to form gluten. The more protein and the more gluten in your batter or dough, the more structure the finished product is going to have. This is why directions for cakes and brownies warn against over-mixing, which would create gluten and a chewy or tough final product. On the flip side, bread is kneaded and choux pastry cooked to produce gluten so the final products rise and hold a shape.
Of course, you can help this process along by altering the amount of protein you include in the first place. Wheat flour in the US comes in about four categories where protein is concerned: whole wheat, bread, all-purpose, and cake. Whole wheat contains the most protein, which partially explains why whole wheat bread is more filling than white. Bread flour is higher in protein than all-purpose, which is higher than cake. Moving up the scale is going to produce baked goods with more structure; moving down is going to produce ones that crumble more.
The French grow a different type of wheat than the US does, and that changes the protein content of their flour. The basic French all-purpose flour I can find in the local stores is T55, while the slightly higher quality stuff is T45. The T-numbers refer to how much weight is left behind after burning so many grams of flour, basically a measurement of how much protein there was in the flour in the first place; higher numbers mean more protein. From what I've read, T45 corresponds to about American cake flour while American all purpose would be about T65. So across the board all my recipes took a hit in this department. If I had baked with cake flour more often, I would probably be rejoicing that it is now so easy and inexpensive to obtain.
But I hate hovering over a pair of cakes, waiting for the perfect moment to take them from the oven so they will be just done without being over-done, only to watch them deflate once away from the heat, too weak to hold themselves up. I have had exactly one recipe turn out better because of this change, because the cookies were a shade on the dense side when made with all-purpose flour. I've only been able to get the softest of bread recipes to turn out for me here.
However, I am getting lots of practice reading French labels in my never-ending quest for a T65 or T80 flour.
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