Just Baking

School is in the air! What a great time to learn something new about our favorite activity in the kitchen, apart from eating. With this in mind, I’m putting together a new series of posts collectively titled At the Baker’s Bench. This series will feature informative posts explaining techniques, terms, recipes, and tools that will help you to expand your repertoire of skills as a baker whether you’ve been baking for years or are just getting dough under your nails for the first time.

We’ll learn about things like yeast: What’s the difference between bread machine yeast and instant yeast and can one be substituted for the other? (Answer: There is no difference; they’re the same item, so yes.) Yeast breads are a bit tricky, but only until you learn a few essential steps - and we’ll present them here, At the Baker’s Bench.

We’ll take an in-depth look at terms, both familiar and unfamiliar, that you will see repeatedly as you pore over recipes in baking books: bain marie, mandoline, dough docker, pastry cloth, blind bake. You’ll learn which of the three main types of meringues (soft, hard, Italian) to use on a baked Alaska (soft), and why. And if you don’t already know that castor, invert, Demerara, and turbinado are types of sugar, you will! Plus, you’ll learn the best applications for each one.

If you’ve always been vexed by a particular baking problem, tune in. We’ll cover cracked cheesecakes, cone-shaped muffins and quickbreads with ledges on their edges, and cakes with tunnels and runnels. 

If you have a question you’d like to see answered, please comment here or on any future At the Baker’s Bench post, and I’ll do my best to track down an answer. Same goes for topic ideas you’d like to see explored in this series.

I’m excited to set off on this journey of learning, and I invite you to come along! Look for a new post in this series every first and third Wednesday of the month. I hope you’ll step up to the Baker’s Bench with me!