Working at a flour mill, we attend a lot of different baking conferences, workshops, and classes. We’ve had the opportunity to learn from master bakers and watch them work. We wanted to share a few of the tips we have picked up over the years to make home baking easier. We will be posting a series of baking tips, so stay tuned!
Following these Ingredient tips can really help you take your home baking to the next level and bake like the pros!
Ingredients
1. Quality ingredients are always important.
High-quality flour, butter, milk, and other inclusions will create the biggest difference in your baking. Like the old miller’s axiom, “You can’t make good flour out of bad wheat” you can’t make good bread out of substandard ingredients. Make sure you are using the right flour for the job (more info on protein levels and uses in this post) and have all the right ingredients in place when you get ready to start baking.
2. Weighing ingredients is also key.
Everyone measures a cup a little differently, and if your measuring spoon, or eye, is a little off you can wind up putting too much flour in your recipe. If you don’t have a scale try to use measuring bowls or large measuring cups with measurement markings on them so that you can fill them precisely without worrying about spillage.
3. Stir your flour!
Most flour is sifted at least once before it leaves any Mill these days, so sifting it yourself is not usually necessary. It is good however to stir your flour, especially if it has been sitting for a while, before baking in order to be able to measure evenly. You want to make sure that you spoon flour into your measuring unit-not scoop it out of the flour container with a measuring cup. Shaking the cup very gently to settle flour is ok, but you don’t want to pack it in, otherwise, your recipe will surely be off.
Watch out for more tips on home baking coming soon!!