You run a bakery and you know what you are doing. You have a perfect recipe, you’ve mastered the art and you’ve got the touch. Then why use a baking mix to bake French macarons? In this post, we’ll cover some of the reasons why you should safeguard your knowhow, cherish it and shift into using a reliable mix.
Has this ever happened to you? It has to us. More times than we’d like to recall. Frustration, second guessing, wasted time, wasted material, the mess and ensuing depression…
A recent customer of ours told us that he’d lived in France for ten years where he worked in a bakery famous for their macarons. After moving to the US, he joined a local bakery chain. The owners were excited, they had just added macarons to their menu! Macarons were made at a central kitchen, boxed, and distributed to stores. Unfortunately, he said, “our city’s weather isn’t conducive to making macarons. Our macarons were almost always hollow and had thin fragile shells. Many broke at the bakery, we lost some during delivery and more in the stores. I pulled the plug on it as we were losing money with all the waste..”.
Another customer was wondering if they still had to pop the air pockets with a tooth-pick, or sift the mix prior to mixing? When to add coloring and exactly what type? They used Italian meringue, and knew handling hot syrup was an accident waiting to happen….
Lets get to the point. Many successful bakeries use baking mixes for their pastries, cakes, doughnuts, breads and scones because baking mixes save time while providing a solid foundation. Their signature touch comes in choice of filling, flavoring, topping and decoration. Running a bakery is difficult as is, why make it even more so when you don’t have to? Make-from-scratch will almost always lead to product inconsistency, takes more time, relies on trained staff and as a result costs more. If profits are a concern, then you ought to reconsider your make-from-scratch approach. Not many pizza shops make their own dough because it isn’t cost effective to do so. Same concept applies to macarons.
Before losing your attention, we’d like to make a few claims: When using the Angel Bake Single Step Macaron Mix, your perfect macaron batter will be ready before you’d have chance to prep your ingredients (using any make-from-scratch technique). It will take 10 minutes to make a pound or twenty pounds of batter!!! Same process, no mess, no tips, and no tricks. And we are confident that macarons made with the Angel Bake mix will compare favorably to make-from-scratch macarons.
Want to give Angel bake a try? Contact us at info@Saenafoods.com.
BTW, You don’t have to pop any air bubbles, no sifting the almond meal, no need to mess with egg whites, no need to make hot syrup, no need to make meringue, and no fancy macaronage techniques! No waiting for the shells to dry before baking… In short, NO MORE BAD MACARON DAYS! Regardless of what city you live in…
And in closing, here are a few macarons we made a couple of days ago with the Angel Bake foodservice mix for our spring photo shoot.
Baking perfect French Macarons can be pretty daunting, time-consuming, and messy. The internet is loaded with recipes and advice on how to bake Macarons. Yet, the truth is that success can be and is somewhat elusive. It is easy to get different outcomes following precisely the same steps. We say this because it has happened to us. It is just downright frustrating! So what should a macaron look like? Should it be hard and brittle or soft and chewy? In this post, we’d like to share the Angel Bake macaron anatomy with you.
Working with industry experts, we have created and perfected a unique baking mix that simplifies French baking macarons. A perfect macaron has a smooth surface that is not crusty or brittle, has a soft chewy inside, no hollows, a well-formed skirt (feet), and a smooth bottom. And that is precisely what you’ll create when you follow our simple baking instructions. No sifting, special folding techniques, hot syrup, messy egg whites, leftover ingredients, or precision measurements, and above all, no tips or tricks.
The Anatomy of the Angel Bake French Macaron
We’ve created a brief helpful hints post to answer some of your questions. Check out our video instructions to learn how simple it is to bake French Macarons using our Single Step French Macaron Baking mix. Feel free to contact us at info@angelbk.com or post a comment/feedback.
Question: How to cost-effectively implement a high volume French macaron production line while maintaining great product quality?
Pro bakers recognize that scaling a small operation isn’t always as straight forward as one would like. High volume manufacturing operations are built upon exacting, simple, repeatable procedures which aren’t reliant on personnel expertise and know-how. To maintain quality, much of the work is performed by machines, machines that are right for the job. When it comes to baking lots of macarons, consistent batter performance, and product look and feel are without saying very important.
We had learned of Bakon USA and their products years ago and wondered if we could do some experimentation with their one of a kind depositor- the Drop TT. Last week, we got a chance to try our Single Step French Macaron Mix with the Drop TT and below is a summary of half day’s worth of experimentation.
Getting ready to test high volume French macaron production at Bakon USA
The Drop TT is a tabletop depositor that can fill a large tray in about 20 seconds! And with its continuous automatic conveyor, all the user has to do is fill its tank with batter, select a program and push start! Feed it one tray after another and you’ll have thousands of shells piped in no time! So that is the theory…
Bakon USA Drop TT Depositor
The Drop TT has a 30 lbs bin and uses gravity and rotating screws to push the batter through six nozzles sitting below the bin. The size of macaron is determined by how long the screws are rotated. This is part of programming the machine, which also depends on the viscosity of the batter being pumped into the nozzles. For things to work consistently, the batter must have exactly the same characteristics every time. You can also program how many rows and the distance between the rows. We now need to make pounds of batter that is just right for this tech marvel.
Making 20-30 pounds of macaron batter using the traditional make-from-scratch approach would have taken us over an hour of measuring, sifting and folding. Using the Angel Bake single step macaron baking mix, we completed the job in 10 minutes with a pro Hobart mixer. The beauty of using a mix is that we have full control of moisture, mixer speed and mixing time and, as a result, we can deliver precisely the same batter every time! And as an added bonus, the kitchen was left squeaky clean. We didn’t have to crack any eggs (or keep a freezer full of egg whites) or sift and mix ponds of almond flour and sugar. Imagine having to make Italian meringue?
Mixing 10 pounds of French macaron batter
For our first batch, we used 4 KG (8.8 lbs) of the Angel Bake Single Step French Macaron Baking Mix along with 800 grams of 122 ºF water. Keeping with the instructions on the box, we started the Hobart at slow speed (setting one), ran for one minute and shifted to 2nd gear for 3.5 minutes. In no time, we had 10.5 lbs of batter. For our part, we watched the Hobart spin and took pictures.
With the help of our Bakon representative, we poured the batter into their Drop TT bin, called up the macaron program and lined up the trays. Ah, we did have to prime the pump by running in continuous mode for a few seconds. Once the nozzles were primed, we were ready to watch the show.
Drop TT at work
In no time we had five trays ready. The oven could only take four. So we stopped and off into a 280 ºF convection oven (fan speed was set to medium). With fingers crossed, we stared at the shells baking and watched as they slowly turned into perfect macarons! Here too, we didn’t drop the trays on the floor nor did we pop any air bubbles with toothpicks. We didn’t even wait for the shells to dry…
Baking French macarons 280 ºF. 15 minutes and medium fan speed
In half an hour, we had four trays done. With a larger oven, we could have done much more as we had more trays and batter in the Drop TT.
Having demonstrated success, we decided it was time to push the envelope. Could we whip up a monster 8KG batch? Why not try? Despite the Hobart suggesting max of 4KG, we went ahead and emptied two boxes of our Single Step Angel Bake French macaron mix into the mixer, 1600 grams of water and a pinch of the Angel Bake powdered food coloring for good luck.
20 lbs of Macaron mix ready to be mixed
You know the drill, mix at low speed for one minute and then medium for 3.5 minutes at medium speed. Below is a picture of the Hobart and as you can see the Hobart is full!
Made 20 lbs of macaron batter in 10 mins
The ribbon lava like flow was heartwarming!
Checking the consistency of the macaron batter
Let the Drop TT perform its magic… This is really fun to watch. We’ll post videos soon.
Drop TT depositing 6 macaron shells every 1-2 seconds – exactly the same size!
And the results? No trouble.
High vol. macaron production
Check to make sure macarons aren’t hollow…
Macarons turned out perfect in every way!
In closing, we’d like to thank the folks at Bakon USA for giving us time to experiment with their Drop TT depositor. We managed to confirm that the Angel Bake Single Step French macaron mix is a perfect match for the Bakon Drop TT. We demonstrated that we were able to deliver consistent batter characteristics in a high volume setting, deposit thousands of shells in little time and bake perfect macarons. We are confident that you can achieve the same results in no time as well. We are here to help and get you started. We leave you with half day’s worth of work…
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