Basic Principles of Baking

If you consider that most bakery products are made of the same few ingredients—flour, shortening, sugar, eggs, water or milk, and leavening—you should have no difficulty understanding the importance of accuracy in the bakeshop, where slight differences in proportions or procedures can mean great differences in the final product.

If you have begun your food-service studies in a kitchen production laboratory, you surely have been told many times of the importance of measurement, not only for portion control and cost control but also for consistency in the quality of the final product. However, you have, no doubt, also learned there is a great deal of margin for error and that it is possible (if not desirable) to cook many foods without measuring anything. Coming into the bakeshop, where measurement is absolutely essential, may be a bit of a shock to you after your kitchen experiences, but it should reinforce the habits of accuracy you may have let slip.