Fancy pastries with flair, the easy way

New York bakers Biagio Settepani (Bruno Bakery) and Robert Ellinger (Baked to Perfection) share pastry techniques and a formula.

By Carol Meres Kroskey, Baker-Editor

With the right tools and a bit of skill, just about anyone can turn out fancy pastries, says Biagio Settepani, Bruno Bakery, New York. He and Robert Ellinger, Baked to Perfection, Port Washington, NY, Settepani shared their techniques for a variety of fancy pastries that can easily command $3 per item or more.

Settepani noted that fancy pastries can be made up in advance and frozen before finishing, allowing bakers to build an inventory during the earlier part of the week. Then, the pastries can be pulled from the freezer, iced and decorated fairly quickly, and placed on display to tempt customers during the busy weekend.

Settepani's list of pastry tools included flexible baking sheets and pastry moulds, as well as plastic and metal pastry moulds. He also likes to use mousses, which can be made in advance, handle easily and freeze well.

Line those moulds!
While the flexible moulds release frozen mousses quickly, Settepani advises lining metal and plastic moulds with strips of plastic film to allow the pastries to release easily. For example, Settepani assembled a pastry he calls chocolate royale for attendees of the Atlantic Bakery Expo, and shared the formulas for the components.

Settepani notes that this pastry can be prepared quickly, yet has a delicious flavor and the high-quality appearance that make it a premium product. To give the top a decorative finish that doesn't require much beyond a dusting of cocoa and a chocolate or gold leaf to finish it, Settepani uses a pastry comb with wide teeth to stripe the top before the mousse sets.

After removing the pastry from the retarder or freezer, if the mousse doesn't want to loosen from the frame, Settepani suggests using a propane torch around the frame sides. Just warm the frame enough to remove it from the pastry without melting the sides. Then, you can cut the prepared sheets into bars or squares to make tortes. For individual pastries, Settepani cuts the prepared pastry into bars, then cuts the bars into individual pastries about 1 in. wide. While Settepani heats his knife over a flame to make clean cuts (always wiping the blade between cuts), he also notes that using hot water is perfectly acceptable. Just make sure you wipe the excess water off the blade before making the cut for a clean look.

The chocolate mousse mixture can also be used with flexible moulds to make individual pastries in a rounded shape. Because the moulds will "pop out" the frozen mousse, you don't need to line them. The result is a smooth, flawless surface that conveys elegance. Discs of sponge cake are placed on top of the mousse in the moulds before they're placed in the retarder or freezer to set. Settepani often uses a simple chocolate glaze to finish these pastries.

Settepani likes using the sponge cake itself to prepare decorations. By using stencils on nonstick baking sheets, he can spread on a contrasting-color batter in a decorative pattern. After freezing this initial pass of batter, Settepani then spreads on a thin coat of lighter sponge cake, then bakes the sheets. These sheets can then be cut into strips wide enough to line moulds, such as the rounds and teardrops, giving unmoulded pastries a decorative look with very little extra effort. Of course, Settepani notes, many suppliers also provide plastic liners that themselves are decorated, allowing the interior mousses to show, while yielding the same effect as the decorative cakes without the additional ingredient or labor costs.

Carol Meres Kroskey is the award-winning former senior baker editor of Bakery Production and Marketing magazine. She's held baking and pastry chef positions at various retail, hotel and supermarket bakeries, and spent several years as an experimental baking technician for the American Institute of Baking and as a test baker at The Long Co., a co-op for independent wholesale bakers. Carol can be reached at carol.kroskey@prodigy.net