Baking is a delicate process that requires precision and patience. There are many recipes out there for the perfect baked good, but none of them will work unless you follow each step carefully. This guide will provide everything you need to know about baking.
The process of baking
- Mix the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients separately
The first baking step always measures your flour, sugar, salt, etc., into a bowl or container that you’ll be using for mixing. Make sure you don’t scoop directly from the bag! Instead, use a separate spoon or cup to transfer the ingredient into another dish before adding it with all the other dry goods.
That makes it easier to measure exactly how much of each ingredient goes into whatever you’re making so nothing gets left out – this ensures even baking throughout every piece of whatever sweet treat you have planned for after dinner tonight. The couverture chocolate buttons used in this recipe are examples of ingredients that need to be measured directly from the container they came in.
- Combine the ingredients
Once you have your dry and wet goods measured out, it’s time to mix them. It is where most recipes differ. Some call for only mixing everything until just combined, while others ask that you beat or whisk everything together vigorously so everything gets distributed evenly.
Whichever way you choose to go with this step depends on how dense a batter or dough you want in the end product.
- Let the batter rest
Before you can bake anything, let’s face it. The dough has to sit around for a little while. This step in baking is where all of those delicious chemicals and natural processes we mentioned earlier get going and transform your ingredients into something even better than they were before.
Allowing whatever you’re making enough time to proof gives everything space to rise – which helps lighten the texture so your baked good isn’t dense when it comes out of the oven like some breads or bagels that don’t require kneading might be.
- Preheat the oven
Before you can put your dough into an oven, we need to do a little setup first. Make sure that the temperature of your oven is where it should be, and then wait for at least 15 minutes after reaching temperature before putting your pastry in so everything gets nice and hot and ready to go.
- Put your dough in and wait
Once everything is preheated, it’s time to get that pastry into the oven. Make sure you’ve greased whatever pan or dish you’re using with enough butter, so nothing gets stuck. Then put your creation inside and set a timer for how long it should bake at this temperature before checking on its progress.
- Take it out
When the timer goes off, you’ve reached your end goal. Take whatever baked good has been cooking for however long and let it sit on a wire cooling rack to cool down.
It is important because if you take whatever pastry item straight from the oven back onto its pan or dish after baking, condensation will form which can make whatever’s inside soggy instead of crispy-crunchy like we all know treats should be when they come out of this wonderful process.
- Serve and enjoy
Trust us; this is the best part of cooking anything in an oven. So finally at the end what you can do best is serve and enjoy your baked dish.
Conclusion
Now that you have your perfect baked good, it’s time to serve up a plateful of whatever sweet treat you’ve been dreaming about. Make sure everyone gets a piece before gobbling down a few yourself.
