BAKING: Method and Methodology.

Shabadu

Feel free to share your tips on achieving fluffier heights, softer textures, and even rising.

Here are a few simple ones to start:

1) Ensure your ingredients are at the right temperatue!

Egg whites for whisking should always be cold. Also- use a cold bowl for speedy whipping.

Eggs for creaming should always be room temperature.

Butter for creaming should always be room temperature.

Butter for whisking into choux pastries and sauces for enrichment, should always be cold, and cut into small even sizes.


2) Always sieve your dry ingredients.

3) Only fold your ingredients using a metal spoon, and a figure of eight over and under pattern.

4) Always use exact measurements for baking.

5) Don't mix up baking powder and baking soda.

6) Shake off excess flour from pan when you have greased and floured it.

7) USE REAL BUTTER! For the love of God!

8) Pre-heat your oven, it makes a huge difference.

9) Once you have incorporated the dry ingredients into a cake, bake it straight away. The air will escape if you let it sit.

10) Try lining the bottom of the tim with baking parchment for easy cake removal.


Will put up more as they come to me.

dudara

A clean, almost sterile bowl, is essential when whipping egg whites, as for meringues. Any dirt, and the egg whites just won't whip as well.

You can place the bowl on a tea towel on the counter to stop it slipping as you whip.

Metal spoons that are thin and sharp edged give the best results, or so I've found. Round, kind of clunky dessert-type spoons just don't work as well

Tree

Don't open the oven door while cooking sponge cake, it often will collapse

The Sweeper

Pastry making:

Apart from needing absolutely precise measurements, heat makes a massive different to pastry making.

Keep everything cold. If you've overworked your pastry (it's greasy and won't roll out), put it in the fridge for a few minutes while you run your hands under the cold tap. Try taking an ice cube and rubbing it between your hands to cool them down. Heat will ruin your pastry.

Try using a heavy rolling pin that has handles that roll independently - I find these far superior to the one-piece wooden pins.

If you can't roll pastry out for toffee, get yourself two sheets of greaseproof paper and a clean tea towel. Place tea towel on counter top to prevent slipping. Put sheet of paper on towel - non-stick side up! Place chilled disc of pastry on paper. (You can flour the bottom sheet for extra non-stick.) Put top layer of paper non-stick side down.

Roll pastry gently between the two sheets, quarter-turning to get dough to roll into a disc. Peel greaseproof back gently for perfect, intact pastry.

DrP

When making a sponge cake: once the mixture is ready, pout into the prepared tin and tap the side of the tin against your hand to get the mixture to spread out evenly. Don't spread it out with a knife and pop all the air bubbles that appear (yes I have seen this done) or your cake will be chewy and leathery not light and fluffy.

antoniosicily

RAISING AGENTS:

from yesterday experience with baking powder: if you are using raising agents (for the first time) be sure that it works and be sure to have the right procedure to activate it. Just take a cup, put your raising agent and tepid water, stir for one minute, then put enough flour to make a mini-dough. Wait 30 minutes and see whether everything works fine.

In case you're using yeast don't forget to add a little bit of sugar, it will help with the "activation"; as soon as the dough gets more than 37-38C the yeast will die.

Usually I haven't a good luck with the irish chemical raising agents (baking powder and so on) so I would prefer the natural dried yeast; obviously you can make the 'natural' one by yourself, using raisins as starter (if you don't know the procedure just ask )