Not all housewives like to do baking, fearing that they will not get a delicious muffin or the dough will not rise. Indeed, appetizing cookies, pies, and cakes do not turn out for everyone. But do not despair: both experienced hostesses and famous chefs are happy to share their secrets. We have collected a selection of tips that will help to avoid mistakes and get delicious baked goods.
1. Read the recipe and then reread it again from the end
Baking is an exact science in which all the ingredients are important, so you should read the recipe before you begin. This will help refresh your memory of the order of steps and make sure you have all the right ingredients. After that, the recipe is reread from the end, starting to perform the algorithm in the opposite direction: turn on the oven for preheating, get all the necessary utensils, prepare baking forms. Then gather all the ingredients and measure out the right amount. Only when the culinary mise-en-scene is completely ready, you can start cooking.
2. Cracking eggs confidently
A piece of eggshell caught on the tooth is not dangerous, but it can slightly spoil the impression of a delicious baking. Fearing that this will not happen, people often try to break an egg with weak taps. This is wrong and will lead to the opposite result. You must break it with precise, sure movements, and then the shell will crack accurately without falling apart into small pieces. If the trouble happened, however, it will be easier to remove the shards if you moisten your finger with water.
If the recipe calls for an egg to be added to the flour, it is better to break it over a bowl and then pour it into the dough. That way it will be easier to spot and remove the splinters, and they may get lost in the flour.
3. Grease a spoon for sticky ingredients
When you measure out honey, molasses, and other sticky ingredients, there is a lot of product left in the spoon and therefore less goes into the dough. A little trick will solve the problem. Before using the measuring spoon, it should be lubricated with olive oil. After that, it will be easier to retrieve sticky ingredients. The measuring cups can also be wiped with oil using a paper towel.
4. Use unsalted oil
The kind of butter to be used is also important for perfect baking. It must be unsalted. This is especially important when making a cake. Excess salt will upset the harmony of the recipe and may impair the taste of the cakes or cream.
5. Use ingredients at room temperature.
Recipe writers rarely specify such a nuance as the temperature of the products. However, this, too, affects the quality of the baked goods. Room temperature ingredients are better mixed into a homogeneous mass and after baking you get crusts with an even texture. Therefore, ingredients that are stored in the refrigerator – milk, sour cream, etc., take out in advance so that they warm up a little. The same applies to eggs. Before adding them to the dough, they should get to room temperature, then the dough will be more fluffy.
6. Salt the cookies from underneath.
There are recipes for salted cookies that require a sprinkling of large salt crystals before baking them in the oven. Traditionally this is done on top, but you should try the opposite – salt the bottom of the cookie. Then the crystals enter well into the dough and will not crumble. And such cookies are more interesting to try – at first the tongue feels salty taste, which then passes into sweet.
7. Use baking strips
When assembling the cake, the cakes have to be flattened because they usually take a domed shape when baked. But there is a way to make the dough rise evenly as it cooks. To do this, a strip of cloth is moistened with water, wrung out and wrapped around the outside of the mold, and then put the container in the oven. If the idea of sending the cloth into the oven is not to your liking, you can buy special strips for baking.
8. Place a towel under the bowl
To evenly mix the dough or whip the cream, you need to keep the bowl in place. If it slides on the countertop, you can put a slightly damp towel underneath. Or roll it up into a tube and then into a circle, forming a “nest” for the bowl.
9. Frosting the dough.
When baking the next batch of cookies, the remaining portions of dough are not stored on the table, but placed in the freezer. The cooled mass is firmer and much easier to work with, forming balls or other shapes. In addition, cooling the dough improves the taste of the cookies.
10. Use a thermometer
At first glance, you could do without a thermometer by checking baked goods with a traditional method – a toothpick or a match. But this method is deceptive, and why play guessing games with the risk of overbaking or overcooking? For example, when baking cheesecake, you have to catch the moment so you don’t overbake it. When baking bread, it’s also important to know if all the crumb is baked or not. It’s easier to monitor the temperature with a temperature probe.
11. Use breadcrumbs
If you do not have parchment paper, it will be easier to remove the cakes from the mold if you grease the mold with butter and sprinkle with breadcrumbs. This tastes better than using flour to coat the mold. The breadcrumbs are nicer in texture and taste, and the crusts are also much easier to separate from the walls.
12. Use a scale.
It is important to keep the proportions of the ingredients in order to have a perfect bake. If the recipe calls for quantities in grams, the products should be weighed, not measured by eye. Any ingredient has the same gram weight, but the density and volume of the products are different, so you can’t measure the same with a glass.
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