Before I took this pastry program, I studied food science in college, getting to know food structure, food chemistry and all that. It turns out to be a really good foundation before jumping on to the field of culinary, where the food science knowledge lets me know how each ingredient interact with other ingredients, machines, etc.
Let's say you are making a sponge cake. You notice how soft and fluffy a sponge cake is, and it does not have a resistance when you bite into it. This delicate texture can be achieved by limiting the amount of gluten that you are developing in the batter. Gluten is a protein that is formed when you mix wheat or rye or barley flour with liquid. The more you mix them together, the more development of gluten you have, hence the tougher the baked product is going to turn out. Take a look at the texture of sour dough, baguette, and other breads. They are tougher and more elastic than most cakes because there are more gluten developed in the bread.
On the first day of baking school, this kind of information is the first info that chefs gave me and other students in the lecture. That day I felt so blessed that I understood this gluten concept from the food science classes I took before. However, I also felt unfair for the other new pastry students, finding this concept difficult to grasp. "What is a protein? what is gluten? what is gluten development and why am I learning science stuffs instead of baking?" These are the students' most common comments the chefs are giving the lecture. And oh how I wish they could have more interest in the science. I bet they'll find it intriguing.
Sometimes this looks like what's on my mind when I'm making bread, with teeny tiny bits of molecular level I sounded clever HAHAHA
I do believe that if you understand the science behind the ingredients you are using to make food, you will find that the recipe makes sense. For example if a recipe says not to mix the batter too long, in the back of your mind you simply know that you want to avoid the gluten development so you can have a softer cake. So you're not just following recipe because it says so, but you comprehend what makes the recipe say so.
Sometimes I also want us to know how to measure liquids. For an instance, a recipe says you need 1 kg of water and 1 kg of olive oil. These two ingredient has different density. Remember your elementary school experiment where you put oil and water together and the oil stays on top of the water? Yes, it is exactly what that is about. The oil stays on top because its density is less than water's. In another words, it will take more volume of oil to fill up the same volume of water , or less kg of oil to fill up the same kg of water. density = mass/ volume).
Now, you go to the supermarket and you grab a 1 L bottled water to get 1 kg of water that the recipe say. You are doing a fantastic job! You are correct because water's density is always 1. Putting on the equation, you have 1 kg/ m^3 = 1 kg/ 1L (density = mass/ vol) and you totally bought the right amount of water needed for the recipe. However now, if you are taking 1 L of olive oil, it does not give you 1 kg of olive oil. Try and scale it. Oil usually has a density around 0.9, so if you are pouring all 1 litre of the olive oil to make the recipe, you're pouring extra 100 grams (0.1 kg) of olive oil to the mixture. If you're making a cake, your cake batter will likely to turn more liquidy than it is supposed to. Or if you're making a mayo, your mix can be messy. It might be a common sense, but common sense is not so common :(
Yesterday, I was working in the kitchen with other chefs, preparing desserts for guests coming to the restaurant. One guest ordered a gluten free dessert and my chef decided to give a Pavlova, an Australian dessert which has strawberries, blueberries, meringue, whip cream and custard. Yes, normally we have a custard in it but the chef decided to take out the custard from the Pavlova. I asked why chef didn't want the custard, then he replied because in the custard it contains corn flour, and corn flour is not gluten-free because it has flour.
My heart and brain was so confused at that moment. I know corn flour is the same as what American people call for corn starch, and it does not contain gluten or the protein necessary to make gluten. Even if it contains flour, only flour from wheat rye, and barley have the ability to make gluten. The concept he gave to me, that corn flour is not gluten free because it has flour, I can't grasp.
What I think about gluten back then:
What I think chef thinks I think about gluten:
What I think about gluten now:
JK. Maybe people that has gluten sensitivity is sensitive to corn, it's possible. And I still respect the decision that chef made.
