Avoid these unwelcome visitors

Bacterial contamination is the main danger faced by food service businesses, and can cause major problems for you and your customers. The presence of food, temperatures between 40ºF and 140ºF and little less than 4 hours is all bacteria need to reproduce in the blink of an eye. How can these unwelcome visitors be avoided?

• Make sure that food items are properly frozen or refrigerated after preparation.
• Check that they have been correctly cooked or baked.
• Insist that your employees observe strict hygienic practices.
• Do not prepare large quantities of products too long in advance. Control inventory.
• Avoid recycling ingredients or mixing leftovers with freshly prepared food.
• Avoid recooking and freezing of food item that have been exposed to room temperatures.
• Isolate and destroy immediately any food products that have gone bad.

"What's wrong with my pastry?"

Each ingredient in a pastry or cake fulfills a specific role it heightens flavor, adds volume, gives greater consistency, adds color or higher nutritional value. The appropriate ingredients, mixed in the right proportion and baked at exactly the right temperature, assure top quality pastries. But a little more of one exquisite ingredient, or a little less of another that happens to be out of stock in the pantry, will lead to the same result: bad pastry.

Here's a short reference guide that, when used with good taste and judgment, can help you handle ingredients in the proper manner. It's about eliminating bad habits in the preparation of desserts and encouraging good practices that will help you bake those perfect pastries you customers expect.

With the right formula, balanced ingredients baked at the appropriate temperatures

No pastries made

without enough lard	too much lard
without enough sugar	too much sugar
with too little baking powder or yeast	too much baking powder or yeast
strong flour	too little flour
beaten too much after adding the flour	mixes not beaten enough or too liquid
ovens too hot and lacking in moisture	pastry moved during baking
too many eggs	too few eggs