Tip No: 6

Wait a minute, isn’t this a pastry cookbook? All the more reason to let you in on what I consider a key element in making great pastries: salt. Used in moderation, salt does for pastries exactly what it does for your beef stew, roast chicken, and lasagna—it enhances flavor. You’ll notice that all of the recipes in this book call for some salt. I often conduct an experiment with new bakers, asking them to taste lemon curd before we add salt and then again after. I love watching their eyes light up when they taste how the salt brings out the brightness of the lemon and makes it taste more, well, lemony. I’ve found, especially with chocolate and vanilla, that salt drastically changes the way sweet flavors taste, making them less one-dimensionally sweet and more flavorful, and I encourage you to try the same experiments. Taste chocolate pudding before salt is added and then after; dip your spoon into a vanilla ice cream base before seasoning it with salt, and again after you add salt. The salt rounds out the flavors and keeps the dessert from tasting flat. It’s a common ingredient, yet it is too often underutilized in the pastry kitchen.