Today’s Topic
As you may have guessed by now, we are by no means professional bakers. We have always just enjoyed baking at home for family and friends, and now, for all of you too! However, despite not having any professional experience, we have tons of home baking experience. What does this mean? Baking at home in a regular kitchen is very different from baking in an industrial, temperature-controlled kitchen. For some baked goods, like bread, this matters much more than for others, like cake. But over time, we have developed lots of tricks that work for us to make baking a more enjoyable process! So today, we want to share some of those with you.
1. Be prepared before you start!
This may seem incredibly obvious, but honestly, it’s something that is easy to forget if you’re in a rush. First, read through an entire recipe before you start baking. This will make it far less likely for you to miss a step or mix up the steps. Also, you’ll know exactly what ingredients you need, which will ensure that you don’t realize halfway through a recipe that you’re missing something essential. Believe it or not, that has happened to me far more often than I’d like to admit. Second, measure out your ingredients individually before you combine them. This can really help if you are an inexperienced baker because it just makes the entire process more organized. It also increases the likelihood of a perfect final product, and who doesn’t want that?
2. Throw away your cup measurements and use a scale!
If you live anywhere other than the US, you can probably skip this tip, as you hopefully already bake using a scale. But if you do use cups, please invest in a scale instead*! Why should you do so? Well, scales are far more accurate when it comes to baking. For some recipes, exact measurements are not as important, but for certain baked goods, you don’t want to accidentally add far more flour or sugar than the recipe calls for. Sadly, this can easily happen with cup measurements. Another benefit of using a scale is that you can bake many more of the recipes you find online (since only the US uses cups).
If you choose to continue using cup measurements, that’s completely fine, but just make sure you are measuring your ingredients properly. So, for flour, you need to fluff up the flour before you scoop it up with your cup. Then, you should level it off so it’s the correct amount. For brown sugar, make sure you pack the sugar into the cup, while for regular granulated sugar, you do not need to do so. At the very least, these tips can ensure that your cup measurements are reasonably accurate!
Just as a note: we always bake using a scale, so if you are making our recipes, they will turn out best if you measure by weight!
*Links marked with a * are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
3. Preheat your oven and BE PATIENT!
In many ways, baking is not the same as cooking. But this is especially true when you are using the oven. When you cook something, it is usually fine to put it in the oven before it is fully preheated. For example, I often do this if I’m making roasted or baked potatoes, since it doesn’t affect the final product. However, when it comes to baking, patience is key! Wait for the oven to preheat fully, even if you are in a rush! If you don’t, you could ruin the baked good you just spent so much time on. There is nothing worse than ending up with a collapsed cake or flat loaf of bread and knowing that a little more patience on your part could have made the difference!
Furthermore, when it comes to ovens, you should get as familiar with your oven as you possibly can. What does this mean? You should understand all the settings on your oven and how they function. Recognize any unusual quirks of your oven, like if it runs a bit too hot or too cold or if anything is broken or damaged. These are all things that can impact how long something should bake in your oven, as well as the temperature you should choose. As you bake more and more, this will come naturally, and you will know exactly how to bake anything in your particular oven!
4. If your butter or eggs are not at room temp – use these tricks!
As I mentioned above, patience is key when it comes to baking. If a recipe calls for softened butter and room temperature eggs, take them out the night before or a day before you are going to bake. However, if you’re anything like us, this is easier said than done. We’ve all been there – you go to bake a cake and both your butter and eggs are in the fridge, rock hard! Well, don’t worry. We have a tip for each that will require a little bit of patience but should do the trick!
Eggs
For eggs, the tip is super simple. Place eggs from the fridge in a bowl filled with hot water (not boiling, just as hot as your tap water can get is fine!). Leave these for 10 minutes. The water should cool down, so empty it and refill with another round of hot water. Leave this for another 10 minutes. By then, your eggs should feel room temperature. If they don’t, just refill with hot water and let them sit until they are warmer!
Butter
Butter is a bit trickier to soften. Realistically, no tip we can give you is exactly foolproof, so leaving your butter out for about a day is probably the best strategy. However, there are a few things that you can try! I often just microwave the butter, but this is very difficult to get right, and you really need to keep an eye on it. The butter can go from soft to melted in a split second, so heat it up in 5 or 10-second intervals. Alternatively, you can use your body heat to soften the butter. Spend about 15 minutes holding the butter (in the packaging, obviously) if you have warm hands, or put it in the waistband of your pants. This sounds weird, but if you buy sticks of butter (like in the US), it probably sounds a bit less weird 😂 Finally, a third trick is to pour boiling water into a mug, let it heat the mug through, then empty it and place it upside down on top of the butter. If you let this sit for a few minutes, the butter should soften.
5. Use the poke test to check how your dough is proofing!
It’s no secret that one of the more difficult things to bake is bread. We have tons of tips to share when it comes to baking bread, but we’ll save that for a later blog post. Today, we want to tell you about a tip that is an absolute game-changer. It’s called the poke test.
So, a bit of science to start this explanation. When your dough is proofing, the yeast is eating up all the sugars in the dough and releasing gases, which cause the dough to rise. Once the yeast has consumed all the sugar it can, that’s the point when it should go into the oven, where the heat of the oven will cause it to expand even more. The poke test tells you that the dough is ready and the yeast has released as much gas as it can. If you poke the dough and it springs back, this means that it is NOT ready – not enough gas has been released. If you poke it and it leaves an indentation and springs back slightly, it is ready because it has risen as much as it can. Follow this tip and your bread will turn out perfect every time!
Thanks for reading today’s blog post! We hope that these tips will help you out as you bake at home. Let us know down below in the comments if there are any baking tips that have been a game-changer for you!
