Baking is a lot of fun. There are so many different flavors to try, pastries to make, cultures to experience through the treats, and ____, but it's also a science. Have you ever wondered why European pastries are often much more uniform than those in America? It's because they measure everything to the gram and with a scale, not just with measuring cups.
Although you can tweak almost every recipe to your own liking, playing with things like combinations and designs, there are some reasons you'll want to stick to the recipe and follow some of the more mundane tasks like thoroughly spraying your pans or letting your butter and eggs come to room temperature.
Here are some of the most common baking mistakes that I, along with almost every other baker, have made while starting off our baking journeys.
Not letting your eggs and butter come to room temperature
"But Marissa, I'm so excited to bake that i don't wait to wait!" Trust me, I get it, I used to just rip my butter and eggs out of the fridge and start baking... then wonder why my ingredients weren't mixing together well and becoming smooth.
Some of the ways room temperature eggs and butter can elevate your baking include:
Even Mixing: They'll blend more uniformly with other ingredients, such as your dry ingredients, and give you a smoother, more velvety batter. This will help you have a consistent texture in your pastries and not have areas where butter chunks melted and left a hole in your pastry.
Improved creaming: Many of the recipes that I write (and many that I don't!) involve creaming butter and sugar as the first step to baking. By having your butter room temperature, it allows air to be incorporated into the mixture, which allows for fluffier, lighter baked goods.
Consistent cooking: When ingredients are at different temperatures (such as cold butter and room temperature eggs), this can result in uneven baking. An example of this would be that cold butter can harden dough, especially in some of the cookie recipes on my site, which may result in uneven spreading or texture inconsistencies.
To bring your eggs and butter to room temperature, consider taking them out of the fridge about 1-2 hours before cooking and using this time to put together your mise en place, find your favorite Spotify playlist, and start preheating your oven.
Not properly measuring your flour
How many of us have (often) measured our flour by scooping our measuring cup in the bag or container and putting it in the bowl? (Don't be shy, I've done it, too.) But did you know that doing that method can actually make your baking really inconsistent? When you put your measuring cup in the bag or container, you risk packing flour down in the measuring cup, often picking up more than you want or need. Having too much flour can make your pastries dry or dense, and although we all want to be tough cookies, no one wants to eat one.
One way that I recommend measuring flour is the "scoop and sweep" method, where you use a spoon to scoop the flour into the measuring cup, then use the back of a knife to sweep off the excess back into the bag or container. This will help prevent your flour from becoming too packed or heavy, throwing off your recipe.
You don't set up your mise en place before starting
In French, “mise en place” means “everything in its place," and that's exactly what you should have before you begin baking. Before preheating your oven and starting to mix, you need to make sure you have everything - and enough of everything - that you'll need to perfect your recipe. If you bake or cook often, I can almost guarantee you'll have enough flour, sugar, eggs, and butter - but what about those secondary ingredients like sour cream, Greek yogurt, or cocoa powder?
I can't tell you the amount of times that I was so excited to start baking that I just went ahead, preheated my oven, started mixing ingredients together, all to realize I didn't have one of those "secondary," yet crucially important, ingredients and either had to scramble to find a substitute, or stop baking and go to the store mid-preparation. Although I'm a big proponent of making a recipe "yours" and substituting certain ingredients (see the last point of this post!) there are some things that just are the way that they are.
Baking at the wrong temperature
When you read recipes, sometimes you'll notice that they mention to adjust your temperature or baking time based on your climate, but even if you know how to bake for your location, what happens if your oven breaks and you don't even know? This happened to me when I was in the middle of recipe testing in my new apartment! I was baking a loaf cake that should have taken about 50 minutes to bake, and took almost 2 hours, which meant that the outside was a little too toasty, while the inside was barely cooked enough.
Oven temperatures and cooking times aren't an exact science, and many factors go into bake times, such as real vs. perceived oven temp, how many times you open the door to check on the pastry (did you know that your oven temp decreases 15-30 degrees every time you open it to check on your baked good?), temperature of your ingredients, and how well your oven functions. When my cake took over 2x as long to bake as it should have, I ordered an oven thermometer and found out that my oven was reading 350 on the display, but actually only heating to 275 due to a faulty door.
If you take anything away from this post, please please let it be to purchase an oven thermometer! You can find inexpensive and accurate ones on Amazon or in your local food store, and they'll save you from many headaches and ruined pastries.
5. You're taking your recipes too literally
I know, I know, I just said to follow your recipes and be careful with substitutions. Yes, baking is a science, but it's also supposed to be fun. Here are some real questions people have asked me when starting to bake, and how I'd answer:
"The recipe calls for dark chocolate chips, but I don't like dark chocolate. Can I use milk or white chocolate chips?" Yes! Make it how you like it, do milk chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, half and half, or none!
"Banana bread is my favorite, but I hate the taste of walnuts, and almost recipe has them, what if I don't use them?" Literally nothing except you'll enjoy the pastry more.
"I want to make a red velvet cake, but I'm not a fan of cream cheese frosting, what if I want to do buttercream instead?" Then do it! Red velvet is just dyed chocolate cake so there are tons of options for you!
Baking is all about having fun and being creative, whether that's with your flavors or decorations. Even with my boozy recipes, there is plenty of room for interpretations and creativity with the type of liquor to use or flavors of liquor to incorporate, and I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with when they make each recipe their own!
Are there any baking tips and tricks, or something you wish you knew before you started baking, that you don't see here? Let me know below!
