Bake Shop Part 1

I'm not a big fan. Baking. It's fine, I'm not obsessed, though. I just don't feel like there's much creativity or freedom like there is in cooking. But let's talk about it.

One of the most common ingredients in baking is.... flour. There's a lot to flour, apparently. Flour is made up of some protein, and proteins coagulate. So in baking, flour acts as a builder. Gluten is a long chain of molecules that make the dough rise (high gluten flour is used for breads, pizzas, and bagels), and when you add fat to gluten, it cuts the long strain of gluten to make the product less chewy.

There are three main types of flour:

1. Cake flour- This has the least amount of gluten; it's used a lot in baking. 
2. All purpose flour- This is the middle of the gluten scale. It's used in cooking and has a mild effect on final products. 
3. Bread (or high gluten) flour- This is that long chain we were talking about. You use high gluten flour in things that you'd like to come out chewy. 

So, next time your recipe calls for a specific type of flour, don't just grab the AP flour. Gluten counts.

The thing we learned about on Monday was a technique called creaming. When baking, the sugar and butter are blended together first and then you slowly add in the eggs, one at a time. This ensures that the eggs get mixed in completely.

We worked on a few things on Monday. First up was a pound cake. We started the recipe with creaming the butter and sugar and then slowly adding the eggs, sifting all the dry ingredients together first, and then slowly adding them to the wet ingredients. We used the same technique when making two types of cookies: Lady fingers and chocolate chunk cookies.

Now, I'm not the biggest dessert fan, but the chocolate chunk cookies were to die for. They were fabulous. I'm not exactly sure why they turned out so good, but it's one of the best cookies I've ever tasted!

Here's a quick look of Bake Shop Part 1

Tip of the day: Before scooping out dough to place on a baking sheet, start with a piece of parchment paper that's the size of the sheet. Before you put the parchment paper down, use a little dough to act as "glue" to keep the parchment paper down so that it doesn't stick every time you put dough down for a new cookie. Also, use an ice cream scoop to ensure that your cookies are all the same size.