This week's Article

 As you’ve begun the steady march toward the holidays, you’ve no doubt started filling your pantry with an ample supply of flour, sugar, spices, and decorative packaging. But if you want to be a better baker and really wow friends and family with dazzling treats this year, you’ll need more than a well-stocked pantry at your disposal.

 To truly set yourself up for baking success, you must learn the tricks of the trade well before you turn your mixer on. Here’s how to go from baking novice to baking pro just in time for the sweetest season of the year. 

TAke a class. Local cooking schools recognize that home cooks are eager to sharpen their baking skills and discover expert tips during the holidays. Sign up for a class or two, particularly those that will teach you new tricks or help you master more troublesome techniques. Don’t have a cooking school in your city? Explore your virtual education options including online cooking videos and popular Culinary Institute of America’s ProChef Podcasts.

Create a resource library. Stocking your cookbook shelves with a few comprehensive tomes means you’ll have access to advice and foolproof recipes in a pinch; Cindy Mushet’s The Art and Soul of Baking and Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours, are good foundations for a new collection. You can then add more narrowly focused titles such as Vintage Cakes or Hand-Crafted Candy Bars for detailed instructions on particular topics, or collect cookbooks like Good to the Grain or Gluten-Free Baking for the Holidays for instructions on cooking with new-to-you ingredients such as whole grain or gluten-free flours.

Test your oven for accuracy. You might assume that your oven is accurate but many home ovens are off by at least twenty-five to fifty degrees. Not knowing if your oven is accurate can drastically affect baking times and the results of a recipe. Fortunately, you can easily test your oven’s accuracy by using an alcohol-based oven thermometer. Then, if your oven is off by a few degrees, make a note of it and adjust baking temperatures accordingly.

Start with good ingredients. A baker is only as good as his or her ingredients, so if you start with old leavening agents, rancid nuts, or expired spices, the flavor and quality of your baked goods will suffer. Instead, use the freshest and highest quality ingredients you can find and afford, and your efforts will show in the results.

Measure properly. Unlike savory cooking where you can often throw in a little bit of this and a little bit of that without drastically impacting your results, baking requires exact measurements. Use dry measuring cups for dry ingredients and wet measuring cups for wet ingredients, and, if possible, purchase an inexpensive digital scale to assist you. For accuracy’s sake, most pros prefer to weigh ingredients on such a scale instead of measuring them by volume. Once you have a scale and try using it, you’ll find that this measuring method is easy to adopt at home.

Give yourself space and time. By organizing your tools and ingredients for a baking project and keeping them within reach, you’ll become a more efficient baker and enjoy the process all the more. Also, remember that you should always give yourself ample time to complete your baking projects. After all, a rushed pumpkin pie will never turn out as well as the version you made when you had time on your side.

 

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Information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

All measurements are approximate.

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