baking: does it come easily to you?

f*** no, baking is so difficult!

the workings of dough are ... mysterious to say the least

i love baking. i struggle with pastry, but I still like to keep trying. i find it kinda zen? maybe?

i am good at baking and at cooking. get yr shit together, people; it's science.
<3

i am, if i do say so, fairly skilled at general meal cooking
moderately skilled at baking, but only when some freehanding is involved -- i'm not a perfectionist, but i like to experiment.

which option do i choose?

moderately skilled = you can bake, girl

ok, i dunno -- i'm not into perfection (although my scone recipe -- which is stolen from the joy of cooking -- won someone (not me) a scone-baking work contest once!)
so i'll take it even if i don't really believe it -- most of my freehanding involves spice mixtures and additions (fruit, nuts, chocolate, toffee, SALTED CARAMEL CHIPS, sugar with ground up lavender flowers in it) not formulas like ratios of fat/flour etc. That shit perplexes me -- I use the same few recipes every time and just tweak with the above things.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/1175989-1146043-Marijuana-VOTE-logo.jpg.jpeg

baking works as long as you follow the recipe to the letter and aren't at some crazy altitude.
but i've known so many people who cannot follow a recipe. IT IS NOT HARD?? you read and you do. i don't know, talk to me when you're trying to make a gluten-free thing rise, because that is next level (literally! #archer)

i think any skill I have just comes from having good memories of baking as a kid with my mum and grandmother -- whenever the weather turns cold, the first thing I look forward to is a baking afternoon. and i love thanksgiving/christmas, coming up with things to bake and having a weird sense of purpose about it. idk.

yeah, i'm of the belief that it's not that hard too, but you would be surprised. one time i gave my scone recipe to a difft work friend and she thought that Cool Whip™ was "heavy whipping cream" and wondered why her baked goods were not as delicious as she expected them to be.

i have a friend who makes the most amazing Romanian desserts -- i'm not even remotely close to her level of skill, I'll put it that way. She is a natural.

xxxxpost i can follow a recipe but i hate following recipes! i always think i can do things better/more resourcefully than what's written down. which works for cooking, but i guess not for baking.

I definitely am dependent on recipes; I can't bake from scratch, or at least I don't like the idea of it. I like rules. Guidelines. I need a handrail.

bread is p much beyond my level of interest -- too complicated, not enough flavor payoff for the work involved, prefer to let someone else make that for me
i have made some breads, but they always wind up stale. every thanksgiving i make some p amazing butter rolls. but that's 1x a year.

and yeah cooking is def separate to baking -- I'll wing meals all the time. But I learned early on: with baking you pretty much have to follow the recipe to the letter, at least until you get a feel for it and can substitute to your own tastes etc.

yeah, cooking is far far more amenable to invention than baking is. i mean, add some cranberries to the dough or whatever, but don't fuck with the amount of baking powder or the flour quality.

i would love to make good bread. i tried the no-knead method twice -- the first time the dough barely rose, the second time it overfermented and smelled like bad beer.

yeah i never do that kind of experimentation -- i don't want to eat a bunch of shitty baked goods, might as well follow the recipe and add the flavors i want rather than try to cheat the system

also yeah i tried that no knead bread once and it was blah, not worth the effort as meager as it was. why bother.

i know a few p amazing bread bakers and it's v clear that i am not one of them

and i speak as a regular user of alternative gluten-free/low flours... let the experts do the trial and error, then just follow their recipe.

the first time i made irish soda bread, i was like "fuck you, my ancestors!"

because seriously, if you can make real bread, make it

I used to make bread a lot when I was a kid, but I don't do it at home now - my tiny kitchen is a big deterrent.

once when I was a kid i accidentally put bulgur instead of wheatgerm in the dough (mum used make a lot of tabbouleh back in the day) -- uugggh it was like gravel bread, I'm surprised we didn't break our teeth

i made bagels once when i was 12 or so
once
what a pain in the ass that was for a fucking BAGEL. i'm not disciplined enough to do that enough times to be good at it.

i guess i just don't like baking all that much. i am ok at it, i just don't really enjoy it.

we're supposed to learn bagels in class this semester. that's going to end in tears.

just remember that it's an exercise, not a judgement on your worth as a human! school is so cruel sometimes.

for some reason my program combined baking with the garde manger class -- so it's a bit of cognitive dissonance to be making pate brisee and then learning about aspics and chaud froid an hour later.

Cookies, scones, cakes are kids stuff and if you can't bake them that is OK! I will bake it.

The real task is pastry, frozen store-bought pastry is grody and a lot of recipes are like "add vinegar now" or "sift a pinch of salt" or "cut in with two knives" and there's that tragic moment when you're lifting your pastry from floury surface to quiche tray and it's all falling apart in your hands, or you prebake and the sides cave in, or your butter is too hot or too cold, or you're being pressured to crimp an edge or something

The nice thing about pastry in my experience is that every failed pastry bake will still produce a mass of crumbly flaky refuse that is nice to nibble on as you roll out a new one

Graham cracker crust is delicious but it tastes like cheating

Homemade bread is a con game imo, like "brew your own beer"

In my experience the only shitty things about baking are a) making sure you have all the correct tools, like a sifter or an angel food cake tray, and b) having to deal with oz vs. mL vs. Tbs vs. g vs. cups

gb - the only words in there that i know for sure are pate and aspic, neither of which I have ever eaten, much less made -- the rest i'm not 100% sure about = you are waaaaaay ahead of me
you are becoming an expert and learning the secret language -- i salute you!

i'm totally kiddie stuff when it comes to baking, there i said it!

pastry baking in summer = surest way to end up in the loony bin

soft butter has broken my heart many a time

pâte brisée is pie dough, it's not like goose liver pâté.

see? i didn't even know that! i'm pretty sure that the art of baking is something i would rather leave to the experts who take the time to do what they do well.

People at work seem remarkably impressed by my baking and the baking of a colleague. We're very much in the "i just followed the recipe to the letter, it's not that hard" camp. Bread and cakes are really easy. Cooking is harder.

I have the French Culinary Institute's 'The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts' at home, which looks like it would present more of a challenge, but i rarely want to bake for the office and can't be bothered to do much at home.

Homemade bread is a con game imo, like "brew your own beer"

I've kinda been like this with bread: it takes so long to make, and if yr fuckin with standard white, it always ends up being tasty direct out of the oven and then stale like .000334 seconds later >>:(

I've had some success on that front by using the ready bags of bread mix for the machines, but baking freehand. They add those preservatives and salts to it that give it a bit more oomf. BREAD NEEDS SALT.

Fruit bread? Now that I can get with. Ive made some damn tasty raisin toast loaves in my time.

I used to love baking butter bundt cakes and scones, but I lost my sweet tooth so I dont do it much now. Rrob is right tho: baking's a science, nothing like regular cooking. Only time I'll religiously follow the instructions.

Beholdeth: a raisin loaf I did a while back:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/179947_10150856610967757_533719155_n.jpg

Home-made bread does go stale fairly quickly without commercial preservatives but it makes the most amazing toast for days afterwards.

i guess i just don't like baking all that much. i am ok at it, i just don't really enjoy it.

^^^ That's me, except substitute 'good' for 'ok'.

I never baked much when I was little/younger because my mom turns Generalissimo during Christmas cookie baking and otherwise, she didn't have the time for making much more than rice krispie bars. I've turned out to be really good at things that work in a small kitchen, like brownies and cakes. Bread isn't something I'm keen to try at home - and it's one of the things I buy that has to be nice/organic/from a small shop. So nice, in fact, that it's a false economy to invest in the infrastructure of bread baking to reproduce the quality here at home. Also, you can get really good prepared pastry here because Europe, but I'm more a fan of making savoury pies when I can be bothered with pies at all.

If you use metric measures and follow a recipe correctly it's almost impossible to fuck it up. However, pound cake is great for freestyling once you know what you're doing. I make blueberry, chai flavour (dates, chai spices and a shotglass full of very black tea), and this one, with figs:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8105/8454629037_c3fb16f7e5.jpg

This has dried figs, fresh figs, fig purée, marinated figs and stewed figs in the batter, and a mix of melted butter and fig jam coating the top.

i'm a good cook but i stink at baking

this is me, he says immodestly. baking is just too *scientific* and unforgiving but I'm getting better w/computer stuff so maybe there's hope

having to deal with oz vs. mL vs. Tbs vs. g vs. cups

god I'd like to put a cap in the ass of whoever decided that 'cups' should be a measurement. just a needless annoyance. I am adequate at baking I guess but don't do a huge amt of it

thankfully things like "cups" here have been metricized so a "cup" is 250ml for eg.

can't cook, can't bake

^obviously my option

the "baking is a science, just follow the recipe" thing should make it slightly easier for me than the pure unadulterated panic and stress of cooking, but nothing i've ever tried has happened like the recipe says it should. there's always one stage at which everything just went wrong and fell apart and i couldn't work out why.

my bf makes bagels - i didn't know til seeing him do it that you POACH them! i don't even dare approach the oven when he is doing that.

just had a banana, cardamom and orange cake baked for me this week mmmmmm all mine

I think this "just follow the recipe thing" is a little misleading, there are so many different variables you can't control - heat source, equipment, quality of ingredients, and even slight differences in quantities can make big differences to the end result. My general experience as a shit cook with following (non baking) recipes is if nothing else the timings given can be unreliable by as much as 100%, and ok I've got enough common sense to see if something is in danger of burning or boiling dry or is nowhere near cooked, but that's enough to give me the fear and make it a less than straightforward and enjoyable experience.

Ok cook, ok baker, rarely bother with latter dough

ledge otm btw

book instruction rarely give enough detail imo (for baking) so seeing eg british bakeoff is useful

i have no common sense. i can't tell, visually, whether any food is cooked at all, let alone cooked perfectly. even if it's just a ready meal i pretty much have to burn it to make sure

i'm an artist not a scientist, baking is annoying

you know i love it

Youn, yeast dough will rise at room temp, just slowly. I've done 48 hour cool rises with no problems and have always left biga (which is basically very wet dough) out over multiple nights as well. You mostly don't want it to dry out or for the yeasts to use up all the available sugars (when they will all die off).

Thanks! I took up making a few quick breads a while back but won't feel like I've begun to bake until I bake with yeast, can knead dough (to the transparent window pane test), and know how to roll a pie crust. I'm not so big on frosting, piping, etc.

It's great that breads change color with their ingredients. I love how walnuts can turn bread purple.

Well this was a fun rabbit-hole to fall down!

https://www.reddit.com/r/foodhacks/comments/b2yvun/interesting_fact_sunflower_seed_butter_turns/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbiEngKpVgQ

Both of those look like a spot-on cross-section of my 'doodles, and actually I just remembered that I scraped out some leftover sunflower seed butter with a new jar of PB, though I'm struggling to remember how much, anywhere from 25-75% of what I used.

I could've sworn that I've baked with sunflower seed butter before (because I usually buy that from TJ instead of PB) but now I'm doubting my memories! #lolold

i think i saw suggestions to reduce baking soda amts if using sunflower seed to counter whatever reaction but when baking goes beyond recipes into sciencey math equations i dip out, i like the science of the end result but if i need a calculator i’m baking something else

If it doesn't kill me and it doesn't taste bad, I can deal with the unexpected green.

And I guess I'm still falling down that rabbit-hole, the labcoats have looked into this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33401798/

one time i made a pumpkin pie with soy milk and it turned out gray?!?!?! like a dang zombie pumpkin pie!

I've been making pumpkin pie with soy milk for over a decade - works great as long as you use unsweetened soy milk. HMU if you want to see the recipe.

baking hive, i need advice!

i am relatively newly diagnosed w type 2 diabetes & am now at the point where i am managing pretty well

but loving baking as i did, i very much want to re-enter that arena again, even if it’s just for a christmas bake of some kind

i thought keto baking might be the go with erythritol as my sweetener & did a test-run lemon loaf bake last weekend w almond flour & granulated erythritol but it gave me suuuuch painful GI distress to such a degree that it’s clear that it is def Not For Me™️

does anyone have any recs for sweetener alternatives? or type 2 baking success?

Swerve is out since that is the same family of sugar alcohol, same w Allulose
monkfruit is out since that is mostly erythritol …
and most other replacement sweeteners aren’t very baking friendly so idk where that leaves me.

it seems like the way into this is prob ~low~ carb baking rather than ~no~ carb and just working w other sugars and almond flour … but so many of these websites are deeply unsatisfying in terms of actual baking and are so focused on the end result ~looking~ similar to “real food” that the process is a bummer & the end result taste kinda crap too

anyway … thoughts? suggestions?

Oh sorry to hear that! I didn't realize that Swerve is erythritrol, I use it regularly without incident but clearly different strokes etc. Would using overripe bananas be possible? Obviously that's sugar but also comes with a fair bit of vitamins and minerals, though you'd have to juggle proportions of the rest of your ingredients accordingly.

yeah swerve is like a combo of erythritol and other stuff

bananas may def be an option although i may need a few more tools since they do kinda limit you in terms of flavor

You can get pure monkfruit powder and liquid drops and I can attest it is a pain to deal with and you use such a tiny amount that it throws recipes off. I basically stopped baking when Mr. Jaq got the type 2 diagnosis so I wouldn't be contributing to his downfall. So now I bake favorites only very infrequently.

I do use Just Better fiber (corn based soluble fiber) in my coffee for the prebiotic factor but the bag says you can sub it for up to half the sugar in baking. So maybe it might be of use?

Hmm also maybe see how you respond to tapioca syrup or Vitafiber syrup (made from either corn or peas) - both much lower carb and glycemic index sweeteners with no sugar alcohols. You could bake with them if you reduce the liquid in the recipe you use.

thanks for the advice jaq! i will investigate those

it definitely seems like very infrequent “special occasion only” baking is going to be my new normal :(

One more: look up the various keto egg loaf recipes. You basically blend eggs and softened cream cheese into a batter. I've baked it in a loaf pan, sliced, toasted, and eaten with ChocZero maple syrup for keto french toast and baked it in a cast iron skillet with sausages dropped in and some mustard powder added to the batter for keto toad. Might hit some of the baking target.

oh interesting! thx

Is bread flour appropriate for quick bread (in this case a cheddar Jalapeno bread)?

sure, it'll work

Cream of Tartar, yuck.

I’m thinking of making my own sourdough starter but after some initial searching all the recipes I’ve seen say to start with whole wheat and feed with all purpose. Can I feed with whole wheat too? It’s all that I have.

Yes, it'll be fine!

Awesome, thanks!

have been preparing meals for my pops and his wife lately, she is gluten intolerant (sometimes she is tolerant I guess? she drinks beer so I dunno who knows) but I discovered Brazilian Sequilhos which has been a big hit, corn starch + condensed milk + butter

and then whatever else, have incorporated lemon/almond extract, and actual lemon/almond, tastes like a fancy sugar cookie, peanut butter/chocolate turns it into a more traditional cookie but anyway super simple and easy and delicious cookie base even if you don't care where the starch came from

Recipe pls!

worth experimenting with ratios but basically

1/2 cup room temp butter (~1 stick)
1/2 cup condensed milk (~half adorable lil can of the stuff)
~1 cup corn starch

350 for 10-15mins, 15-20 cookies

have been eyeballing the corn starch, erring on the conservative side yields a spread out/crispy caramelized edges thing while bumping it up makes a tighter dough, shortbread/Pfeffernusse territory

lately I split the dough in half, dash of lemon/almond extract/sliced almonds with a lemon juice/confectioners sugar icing on one pan and then vanilla extract/spoonful peanut butter/crushed peanut/chocolate on the other

So I figured I haven't done anything weird in a while, and so I decided to try to make chocolate chip cookies with prunes.

i would eat those! (i love prunes)

how did they turn out?

Texture was off and they weren't quite sweet enough, but not bad considering it's a first attempt! They weren't very airy so I'll probably reduce the number of prunes or bump up the baking soda. I was inspired by a base/crust I made once with prunes and walnuts, which I remember being pretty chewy.

Did you purée the prunes or just dump them in whole/chopped?

Pureed. Chopped would've been like big raisin chunks.

Which I think I would like actually!

prunes cut into small oieces would help the cookies to rise more, puree would make them too moist imo

Moisture of chopped pieces giving off steam and creating air pockets?

roll em in flour

Moisture of chopped pieces giving off steam and creating air pockets?

I tried making these at my wife's request (she saw the recipe online): https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018450-pistachio-rose-and-strawberry-buns

Did not get the dough to come out right, it didn't rise as much as it should. Still tasted OK, and the filling is very good. Two things, though — to some degree it just tastes like a fancy peanut-butter-jelly sandwich; and there is evidently no way to puree pistachios for "pistachio cream" and not have the resulting mix look kinda like poop lol.

One question, one observation.

I've seen various blogs say that tahini is an acceptable substitute for yogurt, but after a bunch of attempts, I've grown quite skeptical, because the final product (muffins, or snickerdoodles) often end up brittle and crumbly. At the very least, a simple 1-1 substitution doesn't work.

The question: I've been having trouble getting bakes that have recipes with high moisture content to cook fully through -- IIRC attempts at a carrot cake, a blueberry cake, and a hot milk cake all were underbaked in the middle, and all used (metal) 9x9 pans. Strangely enough, though, banana breads and stuff in my glass 9x5 loaf pans have come out more fully baked. I've used a toaster oven for all of these, so temperatures shouldn't be the problem (right?). Any ideas?

Leee why are you trying to susbtitute tahini for yogurt? They seem like very different substances to me.. If you need to be dairy free you could try soy or coconut or cashew yogurt?

If your bakes are underdone I'd suggest a higher temp. And a real oven (any reason you're not using a real oven?)

for baking, you’d have better luck substituting yogurt with silken tofu or applesauce.

tahini won’t really behave in the right way at all

Leee why are you trying to susbtitute tahini for yogurt?

Probably some leftover attempts at veganism, even though nowadays I end up using dairy (albeit sparingly). Yeah, I think I'll try using tofu or mashed bananas (the wonder ingredient!) instead.

I left out that my underbaked cakes are underbaked in the middle -- they're definitely cooked (sometimes overcooked) on the surface. I'm not using a gas oven because I don't feel like using it (preheating), but also now we're getting into summer.

you may have to adjust (lower) baking temp by 25 degrees … if its cooking on top but underdone in the middle it’s cooking too fast

toaster oven much smaller & tend to cook hotter than standard oven

or just, yknow, use the actual gas oven & get a better result

tbh imo i think you are making yr baking life difficult unecessarily but that is just my humble opinion <3

good advice from VG!

i just made Devil's Food Cake for the first time today, having not really known what it was before. it was like my favourite chocolate Guinness cake except fluffier and not sour. good, but think I prefer the Guinness cake maybe?

Low and slow seems to have worked better: 1:40(!) at 325, though I cranked the toaster oven back up to 350 for the last 10 minutes because I was getting impatient.

THOUGHT YOU ALL SHOULD KNOW, i have made the most lemony cookies to ever exist, with like 2 double handfuls of fresh blitzed lemon peel plus the juice of 3 fat lemons AND a couple tbsps of dried lemon zest, and there are chunks of chewy lemon peel in every bite, and it is a whole delicious lemon frenzy up in here 🍋

Sounds like a lemon party.

yum!

i was thinking of baking something lemony this past week but never got round to it. There's a Mary Berry cake where you boil up and pulp a bunch of lemons. it was more faffy than I'd usually be arsed with but I'm tempted to do it again

I love those kind of cakes, because I can just boil the fruit ahead of time and freeze it. I almost always have a stash of boiled clementines in the freezer so I can produce a Nigella clementine cake if needed.

ooh that's a good idea!

oh snap i was just gonna toss the lemon husks in a simmer pot w/ rosemary & lavender but it looks like whole lemon cake is on the menu wahey!

of course u can't have a lemon party without ol'

https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/65831966c6858e31a7ae780b/master/w_2560%2Cc_limit/Dick-Van-Dyke-Site-Story-Image.jpg