SAUCE MAKING - WHITE SAUCES

You can use different flours - or starches - to make sauces.  These can be

Wheat flour         cornflour    arrowroot

 The size of the grains effect the type of sauce you make - some starches make a smoother sauce than others.

There starch grains go through 3 stages in the making of a sauce -

·        Raw grains - small size

·        Grains start to swell up to 5 times their original size

·        Starch grains finally burst, cooked for 3 minutes and sauce is ready

If you do not stir a sauce, it goes lumpy.   The reason for this is that the starch grains stick together into lumps, hence a lumpy sauce!!

But if you stir all the time, the grains do not have a chance to stick together - and voila - a super smooth sauce.

A white sauce is made by melting fat and adding flour - this is called A ROUX.        You then add the liquid usually milk.

A basic recipe would be - 25grms fat     25 grms flour = roux

and then add the 250 mls milk.

You can get different thicknesses of sauce by altering the liquid - more liquid means a runnier sauce.    For a really thick sauce used for binding food together like meat balls - you use only 175 mls of milk.   

If you want a pouring sauce - go over a cauliflower, you would use 475 mls of milk e.g.  25 gms fat    25 gms flour   475 mls milk.

The starch needs HEAT to burst.    Starch and cold milk equals a horrible sticky lump!!   Heat is needed, and that is why you cook the sauce in a saucepan.    When the starch is heated that is when the grains burst.

The grains like it hot - 60 degrees they begin to burst and finish off finally bursting at about 75 degrees to make that smooth sauce.

THIS BURSTING AND THICKENING OF A SAUCE IS CALLED

GELATINISATION 

Remember this important word and learn what it means.    It is a favourite question on examination papers!