When I’m baking pastries, galettes or tarts, Miele’s Intensive Bake is one of the programmes I reach for most often. From a home cook’s perspective, it’s designed to solve one of the biggest challenges in pastry baking — achieving a crisp, well-cooked base without overcooking the topping.

The programme combines strong bottom heat with fan assistance, giving you the best of both worlds. The additional heat from underneath helps drive moisture out of the pastry, reducing the chance of a soggy bottom, while the fan circulates hot air evenly throughout the oven. The result is a pastry that is crisp and golden, with toppings that cook evenly rather than drying out or colouring too quickly.

Roasted pumpkin galette straight from the oven, finished with blue cheese, walnuts, sunflower seeds and rocket
Roasted pumpkin galette straight from the oven, finished with blue cheese, walnuts, sunflower seeds and a scatter of rocket.

I find it particularly useful for rustic bakes like galettes. Unlike a traditional pie, a galette has an exposed filling and folded pastry edges, so everything needs to finish cooking at roughly the same time. Intensive Bake gives the pastry enough heat to become flaky and crisp while allowing vegetables, fruit or cheese to caramelise beautifully.

The pumpkin galette pictured here is a perfect example. The base stayed thin and crisp, supporting the roasted pumpkin without becoming heavy or soft. The folded pastry developed an even golden colour, while the toppings — blue cheese, walnuts, rocket and sunflower seeds — remained fresh and full of texture. It’s the sort of bake where every element keeps its own character instead of everything blending into one soft filling.

Cross-section of a rustic pumpkin galette showing the roasted pumpkin filling against buttery pastry, topped with blue cheese, walnuts and rocket
A cut through the galette shows the roasted pumpkin sitting against the crisp, buttery pastry.

I also use Intensive Bake for quiches, savoury tarts, and open-faced pastries. Anything that has a pastry or bread base with a generous topping tends to benefit from the extra bottom heat. It saves having to partially bake the pastry in many situations and gives me more confidence that the base will cook through properly.

Like any oven function, it’s worth getting to know how your own oven behaves. Different pastry thicknesses and fillings may need slight adjustments to temperature or cooking time, but once you’ve cooked a few dishes using Intensive Bake, it quickly becomes a reliable favourite.

For me, it’s a programme that consistently produces the sort of pastry I’m after — crisp underneath, beautifully coloured on top and evenly cooked throughout. When the pastry is just as enjoyable as the filling, I know I’ve chosen the right setting.