When it comes to appreciating food there is one category that leaves no one indifferent. While many people might be partial to a good steak or a well-prepared fish it is generally agreed upon that baked goods are a good treat for everyone. The reality is that baked goods require a lot of preparation and knowing how to be made properly. So, to understand what makes baked goods great one shouldn’t know what makes a good baker. So, if you are an aspiring baker, look at this list and see what you need to become a great baker, or at the very least get started on the path to becoming one of the greats.
Familiarize yourself with your ingredients
What we mean by familiarizing yourself with your ingredients is that you should first and foremost learn what you need to bake. One of the best ways to do this is of course to look up the recipes that you would like to attempt and try to stock up on some of the ingredients required for your favorite recipes. In the long term what you want to do of course is to learn the usage and taste of all of your ingredients so that you can learn to improvise by using them based on your knowledge. This of course is a skill that you need to hone over time, and it might require a lot of time for you to properly not the effect of certain ingredients and the required amount to properly enhance your recipes.
Make sure you have the proper equipment
You might read online that to bake you will require a lot of equipment, but the reality of course is that many recipes will require you to only have ingredients and an oven. Depending on the level of intricacy of certain recipes you might require more material than usual, but the reality of course is that you should adapt your recipes to the equipment you have or equip your kitchen based on the type of recipes you want to attempt. Nonetheless, if you are a beginner, you should not invest too much money into it at first since you will notice that many of the basic recipes when it comes to baked goods are all about skill and understanding out to use the bare minimum tools available to you.
Do not underestimate measurements
While many people cook without really caring about the general measurements proposed by recipes the reality is that cooking is a bit more complex than that. Many people compare cooking to chemistry since it can change the result if you add salt or don’t add enough baking powder to your recipe. Proper measurements might be the difference between a cake that rises and one that is more akin to a pie. Unless you are a very skilled Baker who knows the proper measurements to make your recipe work you should follow your recipes and not deviate from the proposed measurements of the listed ingredients.
Do not be afraid to fail
As you can imagine most bakers rarely succeed in their first attempts. What this means of course is that you will burn pies, and you will make cakes that don’t rise. There is no shame in it though since true mistakes you will learn to make the right choices over time. As the saying goes practice makes perfect, and baking is no different. So do not be discouraged if you fail especially at replicating very difficult recipes. The very first step to Becoming good at something is allowing yourself to be bad at something. Feeling and recipes are also a great way for you to properly understand how your equipment works since sometimes the oven will work differently from others which will allow you to familiarize yourself with your oven and possibly avoid the same mistakes the next time.
At the end of the day following those steps will allow you to grow as a cook and a baker. One of the most important things to learn is that whether you are a home chef who tears into their freshly baked bread with their own hands or a refining cooking student who cuts their baked goods with a Japanese bread knife to make the perfect presentation, everybody starts at the bottom. If it’s in the comfort you need to remember that even world-famous chefs make mistakes and have to learn the basics at one point. While you might not be the next Gordon Ramsay you should still believe in your abilities to learn and become a great baker.