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A Process of Baking that Leads to Success
Appears in
Published 2017
If you’re going to read anything before diving into the recipes, read these simple steps.
- Read the recipe all the way through before you start to do anything else.
- Look for ingredients you need. Do you have them? Do you have enough of them?
- Notice steps you need to take before starting, like toasting and grinding nuts or melting and cooling chocolate.
- Gather the equipment you need. Make sure that it’s clean and that it works.
- Look up directions you aren’t sure about. Look for an explanation in this chapter, or research it.
- Know when to preheat your oven.
- Measure your ingredients. We have two strong opinions about this step. Here they are—tips from the professionals!
- Weigh rather than measure. Weighing is much more accurate than using measuring cups. We always weigh at the bakery. When we started to write the book, we wanted to include volume measurements because we knew most home bakers used them. As we created the conversions and tested the recipes, the inconsistency of volume amounts became strikingly obvious. Not all measuring cups are actually the same size! Flours can be compact or loose. And then there’s brown sugar. Do you measure it loosely or do you pack it into the cup? If you weigh ingredients, you don’t have to think about these factors. As you’ll see, we generally use volume measures for smaller quantities, because home scales are not always accurate in very small quantities.
- Measure all the ingredients you need into separate containers. Yes! We mean it. This helps to make sure that you measure items correctly and don’t leave anything out of the recipe or put anything in twice. It also allows you to get all of your ingredients out at once with your scale, do the weighing, and then put all the containers away, allowing for a neat and organized workspace.
- Clear your work area of anything unnecessary for the project. A neat space makes it much easier to bake.
- Read the recipe again—what did you miss?
- Bake away!
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