10 Valuable Baking Tips You Should Know

Keep the Correct Butter Consistency at All Times

Butter is the starting point for making a lot of baked goods, so it's really important to follow recipe recommendations. The temperature of butter can greatly affect the texture of your baked goods. Baking recipes typically call for butter in three different consistency: softened, frozen, and melted.

Room temperature/softened butter is required for most recipes that call for butter. Room temperature butter actually feels cool to the touch rather than warm. When you press it down, your fingers will indent. Your fingers don't sink into the butter, and your fingers don't slide around. For the perfect consistency and temperature, let the butter sit on the counter for about 1 hour before starting your recipe.

Frozen butter is butter that has been cooled enough in the refrigerator or freezer so that it doesn't melt during mixing. This helps create flaky pockets in recipes like pie crust, scones and cookies.

Melted butter should be liquefied and lukewarm unless otherwise specified. If the melted butter is too hot, it can cook eggs in the batter.

Room Temperature is Critical

if a recipe calls for room temperature eggs or any dairy ingredients like milk or yogurt, make sure you follow the instruction. The recipe isn't just for fun - ingredients at room temperature are easier to emulsify into a batter, creating an even texture throughout the baked good. If you are using cold and hard butter, it is impossible to whip it to the soft consistency that some recipes call for. The same goes for eggs - when they are at room temperature, they add volume to the batter.

Read the Recipe Before You Start

Reading the recipe ahead will help you understand the how, why, where and when of what you will be doing. This will take you 1-5 minutes and will save you from wasting your ingredients and money on failed recipes.

Prepare Ingredients Ahead of Time

Measure your ingredients before you start the recipe. Read through the ingredients and have them ready to sit on the counter. When you start a recipe this way, there's little room for error; you don't have to fiddle around with the recipe. And also try not to substitute ingredients. Please remember that baking is chemistry. Follow the recipe as written first, then if you feel confident, make any substitutions you see fit.

Know about How to Measure

It's actually one of the top baking tips. As you all know that baking is science. Excellent baking requires precise proportions, proven techniques, and well-tested recipes. Unlike cooking, you can't just throw some ingredients together and bake something, mess it up, and then eat it anyway. Therefore one of the most important baking tips is to measure ingredients properly.

Use a measuring cup or spoon to measure dry ingredients as they are specially designed for dry ingredients. Level the dry ingredients with a spoon. This means you should use a spoon to fill and level the cup. This is especially important for flour. Scooping flour (or any dry ingredient) packs that ingredient down, and you may get 150% more than you actually need. Recipes that call for 1 cup of flour and bake with 2 or more cups will definitely fail. For liquid ingredients, use the clear liquid measuring cup.

To Be Continued…