Mission: Professional Chef: On Folding

No, I haven't made an angel food cake. Cake bakery terrifies me. Years of cheap ovens in cheap rentals have instilled a solid love of the braise, and an automatic distrust of promised success in anything as unforgiving as pastry.

This is where working as a chef comes in handy. That which I would avoid at home (where I have a functional oven for the first time since I left the nest), I am forced to do as a matter of prep. My love of measuring things has earned me the dubious honor of "dessert queen" in the kitchen, and thus I find myself making tiramisu and chocolate souffles a couple of times a week.

This, combined with the fact that my promised pay rise is tied to our ability to meet our forecasted GPs (gross profits) has made me fanatical about yield. To wit: I costed tiramisus at a yield of 15 from a recipe. My current--delicious--record is 18. But in the hands of a less-practiced chef, we got a grand total of 12. Obviously, this affects our margins.

My secret is in the folding, and Professiona Chef reminded me of finer points of technique that I'd learned long ago from an Alton Brown program. Folding carelessly or roughly deflates the egg whites, reducing total volume from a recipe. Here, as far as I'm concerned is the proper folding technique:

1. Mix all the heavy stuff together. This should really include everything but the egg whites or whipped cream used to lighten the final product. Taste. It should be delicious, if a little intense.

2. Beat your lightener to the desired consistency.

3. Immediately fold 1/4 to 1/3 of the lightener into the heavy stuff. Go for incorporation more than ethereal texture, but don't batter the lightener into flatness.

4. Fold your now-lighter flavoring mix into the rest of the lightener. Pour into the final pan or mold as quickly and gently as possible.

The above technique has the advantage of bringing the consistency of an often-heavy flavoring mix/component closer to the consistency of fluffy, light, and fragile egg whites or cream. It's easier to fold, and you keep the volume. And in a restaurant, that means two things: a guest ecstatic at the juxtaposition of lightness in texture and richness in flavor and higher actual than forecasted profits.

Plus the cook saves time through saved effort combining two diametrically opposed solutions. Also, I feel like a badass when I get more yield than I predicted. Score one for The Professional Chefas a casual reference.