Baking bread, cakes or cookies at home so that they have your desired texture, appearance, and nutritional value like professionally baked goods requires more than the mix-and-bake approach. It takes some understanding of the baking process, tools, techniques, and ingredients.
1. Understand the nature and characteristics of ingredients and what they do to the overall process. Ingredients such as flour, eggs, fats and oils, sugar, yeast, artificial flavours, have peculiar properties which impart a unique texture, taste and look to the finished product.
Read and understand the entire cookie recipe. List ingredients in the order in which they will be used. While a batter is mixed and standing or the oven is being preheated, make sure you are not wasting time by preparing something that should have been done before had you followed the recipe properly.
2. Make sure that ingredients, particularly eggs and butter, are at room temperature unless otherwise indicated. Depending on your recipe, you might have to start by either combining ingredients or whipping egg whites or melting chocolate.
If your recipe requires you to combine two mixtures of ingredients that have different temperatures and/or consistencies, you should always do this step by hand.
3. Try to add just a quarter of the lighter mixture to the denser one first. This brings them closer in consistency, making it easier for them to blend. If one mixture is hot and the other is cold, first bring the cold mixture closer to room temperature by incorporating a small portion of the hot one.
A proper folding technique is very helpful for performing this step.
• Hold a spatula with the curved side facing down and cut through centre of the mixture.
• Scrape bottom of bowl and bring spatula up against the side.
• Swing spatula over top of mixture and cut through centre again. Rotate the bowl simultaneously for even blending.
4. Measure baking ingredients accurately. It is well worth investing in a good set of stainless steel cups and plastic spoons for measuring dry ingredients.
Measuring flour for baking cookies
• Fluff the flour first with a spoon. Spoon it into an appropriate measuring cup.
• Level the flour by sweeping a straight blade object such as a spatula across the top of the cup.
• If you dip the measuring cup directly into flour, you will compact it and end up with too much flour for your recipe.
Note: With granulated sugar, you can use either this technique or the dipping method.
Measuring brown sugar
• Always use fresh, soft brown sugar for baking cookies. Measure it by packing into a dry measuring cup.
• Do not let brown sugar stand uncovered for a long time because an undesirable crust will form on the surface.
Measuring liquid ingredients
• Using fluid measuring cups.
• Do not use fluid measuring cups to measure dry ingredients.
• However, it is all right to use dry measuring cups to measure syrups, honey and molasses. To prevent sticking, slightly grease the cup with vegetable oil.
5. Do not overmix your dough. Overmixing, especially when making cookies, encourages gluten development, resulting in dense, tough cookies.
6. Do not overbake. Closely monitor oven temperature and baking time.
7. Select proper baking pans and prepare them according to recipe directions. Cookies require flat baking trays, with perhaps baking sheets or grease-proof paper. Cakes require baking tins; breads require pans that are deep enough to allow the bread to rise.
8. Preheat the oven at least 10 minutes before baking.
9. Put the oven rack at the centre of the oven for proper heat distribution. If you are baking in more than one pan at a go, don’t let the pans touch each other or the sides of the oven. Don’t put the pans one above the other when baking on two racks. Stagger them to allow heat to circulate.
10. Don’t open the oven door until at least half the baking time has passed.
11. Baking beans are round balls, often ceramic, that are used in the blind baking of pastry instead of peas, beans or rice.
When baking, the pastry is covered with baking paper and the beans placed on top of the paper; the beans allow for even distribution of heat through the pastry to allow it to cook evenly throughout. Use this technique when you want to create a pastry pie shell.
12. Some recipes call for lightly flouring the pan. Use 1-2 tablespoons of flour from the flour container, not the recipe. When making a chocolate cake, use sifted cocoa powder so that white specs from the flour won’t show on the outside of the dark-coloured cake.
13. The quickest way to prepare pans for baking is by “greasing”. Greasing means putting an even layer of softened butter, margarine or shortening, etc. on the inside of the pan.
Make sure you get all of the nooks and crannies; this is especially important when using decorative pans. Even out any uneven amounts very lightly with a paper towel. Note, however, that not all recipes call for greasing the pan.
By GASTRODENOME