My favorite pastry brush

This is a picture of my favorite pastry brush from cooking school, which I bought not at the over-priced store conveniently attached to the school but at Home Depot.  (Where I get most of my cooking gear.) It’s a 2-inch brush that we used for glazing tarts, basting roasts or birds, brushing egg wash over doughs, and butter over, well, pretty much everything.  I’ve been using it to brush down the  syrup that can crystalize on the side of the pot when you cook sugar.  This happens a lot when you make caramel or jams, and is usually easily prevented by running a wet brush down the side before things get too hot.  So I have a whole drawer of brushes next to the stove. (Store them in a drawer, not out in a jar, as they may look all pretty and Pissarro-like but will collect dust and kitchen grease very quickly.) Pastry brushes are also fabulously handy when you have kids around.  Put said children to work brushing your pies with water or beaten egg, then dusting the brushed dough with sugar before baking the pies.  Then hand the kids a pot of paint and let them paint the kitchen chairs.  Pick up some extra brushes at the hardware store for this (they’re cheap), since tempura paint isn’t, sadly, on the ingredient list of most recipes.

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Tagged as: baking, cooking with kids, techniques, tools