10 Valuable Baking Tips You Should Know

Weigh Your Ingredients

The small kitchen scale is in valuable. It is probably by far one of the most useful tool in the kitchen. A gram or an ounce is always a gram or an ounce, but a cup is not always a cup. That's why some gram measurements are provided in recipes. Again, precision is everything.

Get Your Oven Thermometer

You will be using the oven a lot and sometimes the temperature drops. Yes, the actual oven temperature can be much higher or lower than the controller says.

Use an oven thermometer. Put it in the center of your oven. Some hang on a rack, or they can sit directly on the bottom of the oven. Although inexpensive, they're irreplaceable in a baker's kitchen. Place it in your oven so you know the actual temperature.

• Unless you have a brand new or regularly calibrated oven, your oven’s temperature may not be accurate. When you set your oven to 350°F, the internal temperature may not be 350°F. It can only be off by a little - 10 degrees - or more - 100 degrees! Do you know what this will do to your cookies, cinnamon rolls and cakes? While this may not seem like a big deal to you, it's a serious problem for baked goods.

• An inaccurate oven can ruin your baked goods, the hours spent on the recipe, the money spent on ingredients, and leave you hungry for dessert.

• If you are using a convection oven, reduce the oven temperature by 25°F. It is best to reduce the baking time as well. Your eyes are the best tools to determine when a baked good is done.

Close Your Oven Door

Now you know how the temperature of the oven can ruin a recipe. But the only way to get rid of the oven temperature completely is to keep opening and closing the oven door to peek inside. It can be tempting to leave the oven ajar and see your cakes rise, cookies bake and cupcakes puff. But doing so will let in cold air, which can interrupt the cooking and/or normal rise of the baked goods.

If you need to test the doneness of the cake with a toothpick, do so ASAP. Take it out of the oven, turn off the oven immediately, test doneness, and put it back in the oven as soon as possible if you need more oven time.

Chill Your Cookie Dough

Cooling the cookie dough in the fridge to firm up and reduce the possibility of overspreading. Freezing cookie dough not only ensures thicker and firmer cookies, but also enhances flavor. Not only that, cold cookie dough is much easier to handle and shape. In chewy chocolate chip cookies, for example, it helps enhance buttery, caramel flavors. Once cooled, let your cookie dough sit at room temperature for about 10 minutes before rolling and baking. Sometimes cookie dough is too difficult to roll/handle after refrigeration.

• Do not skip this step if the recipe calls for cooling the cookie dough.

• If the recipe produces super sticky cookie dough, cool it before rolling and baking.

Secret Cookie Trick

One last baking tip, it's all about cookies. To make leftover cookies softer, store them with a loaf of bread. Have you ever heard of this before? If storing the cookies in a container or cookie jar, you can also put a regular loaf of bread inside. The cookies absorb all the moisture from the bread, making the bread hard and the cookies extra soft. They will stay soft for days!

Hopefully these baking tips will help you achieve recipe success and the kitchen confidence you crave. And if you have any questions regarding baking, please feel free to leave comment or email us directly at support@kitchenin.com.