Sponge cake is the basis for many pastries, cakes, pastries and rolls. This is a universal baking. A real biscuit is prepared without the addition of baking powder, and rises in the oven due to eggs beaten in foam. At the same time, it turns out lush, airy, porous. In addition to eggs and flour, other ingredients can be added to the dough, for example, butter, kefir, milk, cocoa and even carrots. Combines all these recipes with a common cooking technology.
In the article we will talk about how to bake a biscuit according to the classic recipe: in what form, for how long and at what temperature. Be sure to consider the main nuances and dwell on the main mistakes that are made when baking it.
Classic biscuit in the oven: a selection of ingredients
In the process of cooking, it is not enough just to knead the dough and send it to the oven. If you neglect other conditions, then it simply will not rise when heated and as a result you will get not a fluffy biscuit, but a flat "sole". The “right” products play almost the main role in this process.
To prepare a classic biscuit in the oven, you need the following ingredients:
- The eggs. Without this product, the biscuit will not work. This is the main ingredient in biscuit dough, so saving on eggs is not worth it. And yes, they should be cold. It is the eggs that make the dough magnificent when kneading and durable when baking. Egg mass must be airy. This is the key to obtaining the perfect biscuit at the exit.
- Flour. Biscuit can be baked from almost any flour, preferably with a high starch content. You can take only wheat or partially replace it with corn, rice, buckwheat. You can even mix regular flour with starch - the biscuit will turn out friable. The only flour that does not contain starch is nut. A biscuit will definitely not work out of it.
- Sugar. For biscuit dough, you need the most common sugar with small crystals that dissolve quickly enough in the egg mass.
These are all ingredients for a classic biscuit. Now is the time to master the technology of its preparation.
Step-by-step dough preparation
The simplest biscuit according to the basic recipe is prepared from the following ingredients:
- eggs - 4 pcs.;
- flour - 120 g;
- sugar - 120 g.
It is important to accurately measure all products using a kitchen scale. Part of the flour can be replaced with corn starch (20-30 g).
Kneading the dough is done in a cold way, and the process itself consists of the following steps:
- Sift flour twice to saturate it with oxygen.
- Divide eggs into proteins and yolks. It is advisable that they be well chilled. Squirrels should be separated into a deep bowl, dry and non-fat, and yolks into medium-sized dishes. The first protein container is recommended to be refrigerated for a while.
- Pour half the sugar into the yolks. Using a mixer, beat the ingredients at high speed until a white and thick mass is obtained. Wash and dry the whisk.
- Beat chilled proteins on a high-power mixer. When the mass becomes dense, and the corollas leave a characteristic mark, sugar can be introduced. This should be done carefully, on a tablespoon. Continue whipping the proteins until the mass is shiny.
- Combine the whipped proteins with the yolks by folding, repeating with a spoon movement from the bottom up. No need to mix for a long time. Otherwise, the proteins will settle, and the dough will not rise.
- Add flour to the egg mass. Stir quickly. As soon as the lumps disappear, you need to stop so that the dough does not turn out too dense and heavy. Now you can start baking.
This is the coldest way of kneading dough, which is the most common. But there is also a second option for its preparation.
Hot dough kneading method
In this case, you do not need to separate the proteins from the yolks, which means that the biscuit can be prepared using fewer dishes. Eggs should not be cold. In addition, this cooking method will help save the situation when, when the eggs were divided, the yolk accidentally fell into the protein.
How to bake a cake biscuit in a hot way, the following instructions will tell:
- Prepare a water bath so that the top pot is above boiling water. That is, the egg mass will be steamed.
- Break 4 eggs into the upper dish. Beat them at high speed mixer. As soon as the temperature of the egg mass reaches 45 ° C, the pan must be removed from the water bath and put on the table.
- Continue the whipping process. After a few minutes, the egg mass should double or triple and turn white.
- Gently introduce the flour and mix the dough with a spatula. Now you can pour it into a mold and send it to the oven.
How to bake a biscuit in different forms
To begin with, it should be clarified that there are three ways to prepare the form for baking a biscuit:
- "French shirt." With this method, the bottom and walls of the mold are lubricated with softened butter, and then covered with a thin layer of flour. As a result, after baking, the biscuit very easily departs from the form, literally falls out. The only drawback is that when it cools, it settles a little.
- Do not grease the walls, and cover the bottom with baking paper. After the biscuit is completely cooled in the mold, it should be separated from the walls with a sharp knife.
- Do not grease or line with paper. The biscuit cools upside down, it turns out smooth, without a convex cap. But just to extract the finished cake from the form, you need skill and accuracy.
Professional pastry chefs mainly use a metal split ring for making biscuits. It is very easy to line the bottom with baking paper, then quickly get the finished cake. However, housewives are often interested in whether it is possible to bake a biscuit in silicone form. In fact, it all depends on whether the walls are lubricated with butter. When choosing a "French shirt", you can use a uniform from any material. But other methods are intended only to prepare for baking in a split ring.
As for whether it is possible to bake a biscuit in a glass form, then this is quite acceptable, but only if you pre-grease it with butter and sprinkle with flour.
Cooking time, oven mode and other nuances
After kneading, bake the dough immediately. That is why the oven should always be preheated in advance. The fact is that the beaten egg mass consists of many air bubbles inside, which expand when heated and the dough rises. At the same time, the air temperature in the oven should be in the range of 180-200 ° C.
Biscuit preparation time on average is 30-40 minutes. At the same time, it is strictly forbidden to open the door for the first 15 minutes, and to try the cake for readiness should not be earlier than 25 minutes from the start of cooking. To do this, you can use a wooden toothpick, which should come out of the biscuit dry.
In addition, it is equally important to consider in what mode of the oven the biscuit is baked. So, the level should be average so that cooking occurs evenly. The oven mode must be selected "top-bottom". In this case, the dough is baked perfectly from all sides.
It is not always possible to bake a biscuit in a gas oven. As in electric, it must be cooked at an average level, and so that the cake does not burn from above, it is recommended to tighten the form with foil. If in a gas oven the biscuit burns from below, then a baking tray with water should be put on the lower level. Then the cake will turn rosy and moist.
How to cool a biscuit
Very often, when baking from above, a hill forms. But for the preparation of the cake, all the cakes should be smooth, about the same height. To get rid of the slide, the top of the biscuit can be cut with a sharp knife with a wide blade. But most often, if the hill is small, it is enough to turn the biscuit upside down when cooling and place it on a wire rack. After a few hours, it will become more even so that it can easily be cut into the right amount of cakes.
Experienced confectioners recommend baking a biscuit in advance, and not on the eve of the celebration, for which the cake is being prepared so that it can properly "lay down". To do this, after cooling, it must be wrapped in cling film and sent for at least 6 hours in the refrigerator. The biscuit will turn out more moist, dense and it will be easier to work with it further.
The subtleties of working with biscuit dough
The following secrets from experienced masters of confectionery will tell you how to bake a biscuit:
- To prepare the dough, you should use only fresh eggs, as well as dry, fat-free dishes and a powerful mixer.
- Dry ingredients are mixed and sieved with flour before being added to the dough.
- After kneading, the dough is immediately poured into a pre-prepared form and sent to the preheated oven. Do not hesitate. The dough will settle and you can forget about the splendor of the biscuit.
- It is strictly forbidden to open the oven for the first 15 minutes of cooking.
- The readiness of the biscuit can be checked with a dry toothpick no earlier than 25 minutes from the start of cooking. The average baking time is 35 minutes.
- The baking temperature of the biscuit is 180-200 ° C.
- Before cutting into cakes, the biscuit must necessarily lie in the cold for 6-8 hours.
Mistakes in baking a biscuit
Before embarking on the cooking process, it is imperative to consider all the nuances of how to bake a biscuit properly. Otherwise, the following problems may occur with baking:
- The dough does not rise well in the oven. This means that by the start of baking, the whipped whites mixed up with the mixer. Perhaps they were whipped for too long, as a result of which the air bubbles inside disappeared.
- The dough is too thin. Such an error happens if the whites and yolks are not whipped well enough.
- Biscuit donkey immediately after removing from the oven. This can happen if the mold is taken out of the oven too early.
- Biscuit donkey right while baking in the oven. Causes of error: the oven was opened too early; sharply slammed the door when opening; cold air entered the oven.
- The biscuit on top was burnt. Such a problem can be encountered if the oven has been set too high. Also next time you can try to put the form 1 level lower.
What if the problem is in the oven?
If the heating is uneven, the dough will rise up a hill. To prevent this from happening, the mold should be tightly tightened with foil on top. If the biscuit due to uneven heating systematically burns, it is recommended to put a baking sheet with water from below. All these manipulations must be done before putting the form with the dough into the oven.
How to cut a fluffy biscuit into cakes
There are many devices for obtaining smooth and thin enough cakes. These include the so-called "string", which is often used by professional confectioners.
But easier and even faster, the biscuit is cut into cakes using a conventional thread. To do this, with a sharp knife, make an incision in a circle, then bring a thread into it and connect its ends from the opposite side. To make the cake more even, it is preliminary recommended to do the marking with toothpicks.
Boiled chocolate sponge cake
A simple recipe for a classic chocolate biscuit is to do the following:
- Preheat the oven to a temperature of 180 degrees.
- Put together all the dry ingredients for the dough: flour (3 tbsp.), Sugar (2 tbsp.), Cocoa (½ tbsp.), Soda (2 tsp.).
- In a separate deep container, beat with a mixer 2 eggs until a lush snow-white mass is obtained. Pour ½ cup refined oil into it. Beat well again.
- Pour 200 ml (1 tbsp) of milk into the plant-egg mass.
- For 3 times, each time thoroughly whipping, introduce the dry mixture.
- Knead the dough. Immediately pour it into a pre-prepared form and bake a chocolate classic biscuit.
- According to the recipe, you need to cook it 50 minutes or until dry toothpicks.
Delicate Kefir Sponge Cake
The dough in the oven rises not only due to beaten eggs, as in the classic recipe, but also due to the addition of soda or baking powder. This is the basis for the technology for preparing the next chocolate kefir biscuit. The dough for it includes only 5 ingredients: flour, sugar, cocoa, soda and kefir. That is, this biscuit is baked without eggs. But from this he turns out no less magnificent and tasty. It should be prepared like this:
- In warm kefir (1 tbsp.) Add sugar (1 tbsp.). Mix well with a whisk or beat with a mixer.
- Sift 1 cup flour, 2 tablespoons of cocoa and ½ teaspoon of soda into the sweet kefir mass.
- Mix. Pour the dough into the prepared form and send it to the oven preheated to 200 ° C for 30 minutes.
- Cool first in the form, and then upside down on the wire rack.