Custard sauce of baked all-purpose sauce

Custard Cream, known as "the pastry chef's sauce", means that this sauce is very commonly used in desserts, and its status is similar to the red bean paste in Chinese pastry, with a feeling of "everything can be filled". Custard sauce can be used as the filling of puffs, macarons, cakes, bread, etc., and can also be used for decorating, dipping sauces, etc., this kind of sauce uses heat to denature protein and starch, so that the mixture containing a lot of milk becomes a thick and viscous sauce. This semi-liquid sauce is sweet and not greasy, melts in the mouth, and has a strong custard flavor, which is popular with the majority of foodies. The taste of custard sauce can be varied, such as adding matcha powder, cocoa powder or coffee powder to make a variety of sauces with different colors and flavors, mixed with whipped whipping cream is custard cream sauce, and mixed with softened cream cheese is custard cheese sauce. The basic Custard sauce is very simple, and its main ingredients are starch, eggs, milk, and sugar. The classic vanilla custard sauce is also infused with vanilla seeds to dissolve the flavor of vanilla into the milk, and the aromatic flavor is truly a must-kill vanilla dessert on the market. However, this vanilla pod from Madagascar is the nobility of baking ingredients, and the price is relatively expensive, and most people are reluctant to eat it, such as me. Therefore, with or without adding what you can do, it's really not good, and the beggar's version of Custard sauce can also be eaten improvised, right? According to the experience summed up by foreign ancients, the ratio of these four raw materials is 25 grams of starch, 50 grams of egg yolk (about 3), 250 grams of milk, and 50 grams of sugar. According to the baking percentage, it is 100% starch, 200% egg yolk, 1000% milk, and 200% sugar. Starch can be corn starch, wheat starch or cake flour, of which cake flour is probably the most common in home baking, with more than 80% starch content, it is no problem to replace starch with it. Avoid using high-gluten flour because it is too high and affects the delicate texture of Custard sauce. The egg yolk contains protein and lecithin, which provides coagulability and emulsification to custard sauce and adds to the egg flavor of the sauce. Whole milk is usually used for milk, and there are not many requirements, as long as it does not expire. You can add or decrease sugar according to your preference, but it has a strong water retention property that can affect the moistness of custard sauce. As is customary, I have 20 days of experience in the pastry world, and now I am going to start a brief explanation of the process and principle of Custard sauce, the key of which is the word "smooth", which is more smooth than a certain Fu's chocolate. Separating the fresh eggs is the first step, and then mixing the caster sugar with the yolk well. In addition to its water-retaining properties, sugar also increases the coagulation temperature of the egg yolk, which also prevents boiling milk from easily scalding the egg yolk. After the flour has been sifted, add the egg yolk liquid to prevent more lumps, and stir until the dry powder is completely gone. Slowly pour the milk that has been boiled to a boil into the batter, why not pour the batter into the milk? If the batter is poured with milk, the first part of the batter will be scalded by the hot milk, resulting in a large amount of lumps, which is the last thing that pastry chefs want. It is also necessary to stir constantly during the pouring process, so that the milk can be quickly cooled and the protein and starch will not coagulate. Due to the very high proportion of milk, the mixture is still flowing. This is followed by a second filter to filter out the condensate that was accidentally generated. Pour the filtered mixture into a pot, heat over low heat and stir constantly. It's best to use a thick-bottomed milk pot so that the temperature rises more slowly and evenly. The effect of stirring is twofold, one is to make the batter evenly heated, and the other is to continuously break the network connection structure between protein and starch molecules to avoid premature coagulation. During the heating process, starch will go through three stages: gelatinization, thickening, and thinning. The gelatinization phase begins at around 60 degrees, when the starch particles absorb water and expand, and finally rupture to release amylose and amylopectin molecules. When the temperature reaches about 80 degrees, the solution becomes more viscous due to the long chains of a large number of starch molecules being wound together, and this is the thickening stage. At this time, the fire can not be stopped, and the heating should be continued until the temperature of the solution reaches more than 95 degrees, so that the solution boils. The starch molecular chain is broken under the influence of high temperature, which reduces the viscosity of the mixture and enhances the fluidity, which is the thinning stage. The speed of change between these three stages is so rapid that a large fire should never be opened to avoid overheating and causing complete solidification. The protein also solidifies in the pot, and its coagulation temperature is between 60-80 degrees, but why doesn't it have the effect of steaming eggs in the end? Because milk weighs 5 times the weight of egg yolk, a large number of water molecules will affect the degree of bond of protein molecules, and starch molecules scattered between protein molecules will also interfere with their network bonding, so custard sauce will not form the state of steamed eggs. When the custard sauce starts to boil and the state becomes smooth, stop heating immediately. At this point, there is still residual heat in the pot, so to avoid overheating, you should pour it into a container to cool immediately. It is best to use a large metal container so that the custard sauce can be spread out over a large area to speed up the cooling speed, and it is better if it can be cooled with ice water. During the cooling process, wrap it in plastic wrap and try to fit the surface of the sauce as much as possible, which can slow down the loss of water and prevent the custard sauce from drying out. The reason why it needs to be cooled quickly is because Custard sauce has sufficient moisture and nutrition, and there is no high oil and high sugar preservative, so it is easy to breed bacteria and shorten the shelf life when left at room temperature for a long time. When the custard sauce is cooled to room temperature, it can be taken out and used, otherwise it should be put in the refrigerator in time. It's worth noting that the lower the temperature and moisture content of custard, the higher the consistency, so you can adjust it appropriately according to the use. When refrigerated, Custard sauce will turn into a jelly-like effect. However, unlike jelly, this solidification state is very fragile, and as long as its moisture content is maintained, it can be whipped thoroughly with a whisk again, and it can return to a smooth state. If there are still lumps, your custard may have been overheated or the water had evaporated too much.