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Home | Culinary | Baking and Pastry | The Art of Baking with Fresh Fruit

The Art of Baking with Fresh Fruit

By Marianne Salina

Baking with fresh fruits adds a degree of flavor to bakery favorites that can't be achieved with canned or frozen fruit. Culinary school graduates agree: adding the freshest ingredients is a great way to start.

Bake Fresh

Part of a baker's education involves learning to locate the freshest fruits of the season to add to pastry, pie, cake or other baked creations. Stop by your local farmer's market to find fruit that's grown locally, and often organically.

Bakers in the South will find a wealth of ripe, juicy peaches and sweet, crunchy pecans -- great for baking peach and pecan pies. In the Pacific Northwest, an abundance of blueberries and blackberries will make baking a pleasure when it comes time to bake decadent blueberry pies and sweet blackberry Danishes.

If your kitchen patisserie is on the East Coast, you're bound to have a nice supply of apples, as well as berries, for your baking adventures. Every great baker should master fresh apple pie--an American bakery classic.

On the West Coast, bakers are in luck. Most of America's grapes are grown on the West Coast and test low in pesticide residues, so baking pastry with fresh grape jam shouldn't be a problem. Strawberries are grown in the West as well, along with kiwis, melons, and other tasty fruits, so bakers can get creative in Western patisseries.

In the winter, depending on your bakery location, it may not be as easy to locate fresh produce for your pastry endeavors. Try gourmet markets, and even the Internet, to obtain the goodies you need to bake your best.

Fruity Bakery Favorites

Once your home bakery is stocked with your favorite local fruit, you're ready to bake like a professional chef. From chocolate-raspberry cake and baked pears to rhubarb and key lime pie, you can bake the best sweets when you use the freshest fruit ingredients.

Baking a Living

If you've got the knack and the need to bake the best, do yourself a favor and check out a local culinary school. Who knows, you could wind up baking pineapple cake in a Hawaiian bakery!

About the Author
Marianne Salina is a freelance writer in Spokane, Washington. She writes about pursuits in education and degree opportunities.