Cookbook | Ingredients | Recipes

| Sauces

Béchamel is one of the five "mother sauces" in French cuisine. A basic white sauce, it can be used as the base of many other sauces.

Yield is 4 cups béchamel sauce.

Ingredients

metric units:

• 50g butter
• 50g white wheat flour (type 405)
• 1000ml milk

avoirdupois:

• ¼ cup unsalted butter
• ¼ cup white flour
• 4½ cups whole milk (>3% milk fat)

• 1 small onion
• 1 fresh bay leaf

optional seasonings

• salt
• pepper

Procedure

1. In a saucepan, soften the unsalted butter and knead into the flour.
2. Cook the roux of butter and flour over gentle heat, but do not brown. (The roux should not have an apparent flour taste.)
3. In a separate pot, begin heating the milk
4. Peel the onion, but do not cut.
5. Add the onion and bay leaf into the pot with the milk.
6. Keep stirring until milk is heated to 80°C. Do not let the milk adhere and cook to pot bottom.
7. Remove onion and bay leaf.
8. Combine heated milk slowly into cooked roux. Add salt and pepper to taste.
9. Stir and cook for 15 minutes. No lumps should be present.