Friends of Erre4m, good morning and welcome to this new post.
The term pastry refers to the art that pleases our palate. Sweetness is inevitably the main characteristic of pastry. But so too, without a doubt, is smell: aromas and scents are part of the mystical experience of enjoying a dessert.
Although the main ingredients for making a dessert are essentially four — sugar, milk and its derivatives, flour and egg products, which are what chiefly generate its flavour — flavourings, for their part, engage the sense of smell. A mere few grams of flavouring, compared with the far greater quantity of the ingredients mentioned above, can profoundly shape the way a dessert is perceived. The use of flavourings should always be given careful consideration when preparing a dessert, because they can genuinely enhance or spoil the tasting experience.
Naturally, the flavouring par excellence is vanilla, and also the most widely used in the world.
It is sold in dark brown pods with an intensely powerful fragrance. The aroma is held mainly inside them, in the tiny spherical black seeds, but the pod itself is impregnated with it too and is likewise used.
Vanilla is the fruit of a variety of orchid native to Mexico, although nowadays it is grown throughout the tropical belt of the globe. More than 110 varieties of vanilla plant occur in nature, but only three are cultivated for their commercial value.
The most prized is Planifolia or Bourbon vanilla, produced in Madagascar — the world’s largest producer, together with the Réunion Islands; then there is Pompona vanilla, more resistant to disease than the former but of lower quality; and Tahitensis vanilla, grown only on the island of Haiti and marked by a spicy aroma.
The fruits, or pods, are up to 30 cm long and are harvested while still unripe, green and without any aroma, because vanillin — the molecule that most determines the vanilla aroma — occurs bound to a sugar, glucovanillin. After the pods are processed, it is released by an enzyme, beta-glucosidase, and only then do the pods take on their characteristic smell and typical dark colour.
Producing vanilla is by no means simple and calls for several steps before it can be brought to market. So let us look at them together.
The first step is called killing and involves immersing the pods in water at between 60 and 80 °C, so as to reduce their vitality while preserving their ferments. This step is very important for developing the vanilla aroma.
The second stage of processing is called sweating and serves to draw the moisture out of the pods and prevent the growth of moulds and bacteria. This sets off the enzymatic action, thanks to which vanillin and other compounds are released. The process ends once the pods have taken on their characteristic dark brown colour and their unmistakable aroma.
Thus begins the third phase, known as drying: the pods are laid out in the sun to dry and to lose most of their moisture.
Next comes the fourth phase, conditioning, in which the pods are sorted into bundles by size and quality, then placed in wooden crates covered with sacking and left to rest for several months, during which the chemical reactions carry on and shape the various aromas.
Before shipping, the pods are sorted by length and quality into grades, from top-quality extra vanilla down to lower grades, which have reddish pods with wrinkled, dehydrated skin.
The complexity of vanilla production justifies its high cost, yet the aroma of this fruit is not remotely comparable to that of the chemically extracted vanillins that we so often associate with vanilla. Indeed, the sachets we buy at the supermarket ARE NOT VANILLA; they are in fact extracted from the lignin of certain types of wood.
To use the seeds from the pod, we proceed as follows:
- first of all, we need to see whether the pod is soft (in which case we move on to the next step) or dry. If it is dry, we must soften it by warming it in a liquid, for instance in boiling milk to prepare pastry cream.
- with the back of a small pointed knife, we press lightly along the length of the pod’s surface so as to loosen and gather together the tiny seeds inside;
- now, using the blade of the knife, we score the pod lengthways, trying not to pierce it right through but rather to cut open its upper face;
- we turn the knife back onto its spine and, with the help of the tip, open up the scored skin; then, still along the length of the pod, we scrape out the seeds, pressing down firmly. We repeat this last operation a couple of times.
It is certain that, if you have never experienced real vanilla, you will be amazed.
As mentioned just now, the aroma in the vanilla pod lies in its seeds, which should be used in small amounts; to give you a yardstick, 1/4 pod per 250g of milk for cream, or per 500g of flour to make shortcrust pastry; so one pod lasts us quite a while. The skin, on the other hand, is not the truly aromatic part, even though it is thoroughly steeped in it.
I will leave you with a little recipe that lets you use the vanilla pod completely as well… happy baking to you all!
VANILLA EXTRACT
20g dried vanilla pods
30g caster sugar
20g water
10g honey
PREPARATION
In a food processor, finely chop the dried pods and the caster sugar. Bring the water and honey to the boil, then pour it over the powder and blend everything together.
Store in the fridge. 10g of extract = 1 pod
Blog by Enrico Gumirato, pastry chef and trainer
