Common Baking Mistakes You Might Be Making Without Knowing

Baking is an art that you can master only with practice. During the training, recipes should be appropriately followed without making any kind of Baking mistakes during the process of baking. If you do any mistakes, then it directly impacts the taste or shape of the baked product

If you want to bake the products to make them look good in shape or taste exactly according to your expectations, then you must read this article. After reading this article, you will know the most common mistakes which are often made by amateur bakers like you and how to avoid them while baking.

Common Baking Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Here are the most common baking mistakes that can affect your results and how to avoid them for perfect treats every time.

Measuring Mistakes: The Key to Perfect Bakes

As a baking practitioner, you must be precise when measuring ingredients. If you measure ingredients incorrectly, the baked product will not taste as expected.

Not all types of ingredients are measured the same way; different methods are used for different kinds of ingredients.

Remember, you must never use a liquid measuring cup for dry ingredients, nor should you use a dry measuring cup for liquid ingredients. So, let’s discuss in detail how to measure various ingredients.

If you are measuring a dry ingredient like flour, use measuring cups instead of a weighing machine. Transfer the flour into the measuring cup with a spoon and level it using a knife.

Special Tip:
Level dry ingredients over a bowl or parchment paper to collect any excess for reuse.

If you are measuring liquids, use liquid measuring cups, which are generally made of glass or plastic and have a spout. Unlike dry measuring cups, liquid measuring cups have volume markings to prevent overflow.

How to Measure Sticky Ingredients?

Sticky ingredients like honey need a different approach. Measuring them directly can be messy and time-consuming when washing the cups. The best way to measure them is as follows:

Cover the measuring spoon with plastic wrap and transfer the sticky ingredient onto it. Then, fold the plastic wrap and make a small hole at the bottom over a bowl to release the ingredient. This method ensures easy and efficient measurement.

Avoid using cold ingredients, especially those typically stored in the refrigerator, such as butter or eggs. Bring them to room temperature before using them in baking.

Temperature Matters: Using Ingredients at the Right Consistency

For example, consider the eggs stored in the refrigerator. You need to place them in a bowl with water so that the temperature of the eggs will become equal to the room temperature. Only after doing so, you need to use them for baking.

Also Read: IS BECOMING A BAKERY CHEF A GOOD CAREER CHOICE IN INDIA?

Butter is also commonly used for baking and stored in cold temperatures. You must grate the butter so that its temperature will become equal to the room temperature. But remember butter should never be allowed to melt completely; it should have some shape before you use it in a baking recipe.

So ensure that all the ingredients you are going to use are at room temperature.

Oven Blunders: Ensuring Even Baking:

When you are about to use an oven, preheat the oven before you use it for baking the dish as the cold oven might damage the taste or texture of the product, you want to bake. So you must preheat the oven.

Remember, the baking process might take a bit longer or shorter duration based on the oven you are using. For example, to check a cake, whether it’s done or not, better use a toothpick and see whether the pieces are sticking to it or not. If not, then it is ready to bring it out from the oven. But don’t open the oven too frequently as it would disturb the baking process.

Most of the ovens are not properly calibrated, so get an oven thermometer and cross-check the temperatures whether temperature shown in the oven thermometer and oven calibration are the same or not.

Mixing Errors: Balancing Dry and Wet Ingredients:

When you are mixing the dry and wet ingredients to prepare the dough to bake, you must use a spatula rather than an electric mixer. Transfer the dry and wet ingredients into a bowl, cut exactly in the middle of the mixture with a spatula by scraping from the bottom of the bowl and gently bring it to top. Cut and fold method using spatula is the best way to mix dry and wet ingredients.

Remember, you should mix with a spatula until there are no dry parts in the mixture that are visible but not for a long time as it would result in increasing the density of losing all the air present.

Preparing Your Bakeware: A Crucial Step:

Before you use the pan, you must brush the pan with butter or vegetable oil gently with a pastry brush. Otherwise, the baked item gets stuck, and it will be hard to empty the pan properly without losing the shape.

Also, you need to use a parchment paper rather than a butter paper as it is heat resistant to cover the bottom of the pan so that it would be as a base for your baked item, such as a cake. So you must prepare the pan before you use it for baking.

Cookie Mishaps: Getting the Texture Just Right:

While you bake the cookies, you need to mix the batter properly. If you undermix the batter with sugar, then the cookies will end up being dense. Moreover, you need to cool the cookie dough by refrigerating it so that the cookies would much be better in terms of taste and texture.

While baking the cookies in the oven, better use a proper silicone baking mat, which helps you save time while cleaning as well. Ensure to take them out from the oven when their edges have hardened.

Special Tip:
While adding the ingredients like fruit or chocolate chips to your cookie mix better coat with flour and then only add to your cookie mixture.

Pie Crust Issues: Baking It to Perfection

When you bake a pie crust, you need to allow for a long enough time so that the entire part of the pie crust is baked. The best way is to bake the pie crust without adding the filing until it turns golden brown, and then you can add the fillings to bake it thoroughly.

Remember, if you try to bake the raw pie crust along with the fillings at a time, then some parts of the pie crust, especially which are not exposed to oven directly, might not get cooked. So, it is better to prepare the pie crust individually and later add the fillings to bake it further and complete it.

Experimenting Without Understanding Ingredient Science

Baking is an art that requires you to be creative while preparing recipes so that you can bake more delicious products. But before you start experimenting with various ingredients, you must understand the ingredients like whether they are alkaline or base so that the taste would be good enough.

For example, consider the most used ingredient baking soda. It is alkaline, so you must use it while making an acidic flavored cake-like chocolate or any other ingredient which acidic finally it will be a combination of acid and base, resulting in good taste. So you must understand the ingredients properly before you try experimenting with various ingredients.

Remember, you should never get confused between baking soda and baking powder while using in the process of baking otherwise, the baked product will not be as per your expectations as per the recipe.

Cooling Cakes Correctly: Avoiding Soggy Layers

Don’t just try to take them out immediately after baking the cake from the tin they might break. So, it’s better to let the cake cool for 30 minutes and start icing the cake later. Even in the cupcakes, you need to wait before you start frosting.

Releasing Air Bubbles Before Baking

When you prepare the batter of a cake, you must hit the pan with batter on the counter, so unnecessary air bubbles will come out from it. This needs to be done to ensure that the cake after being baked, there are no empty spaces or holes inside the cake after baking it. Of course, there would be some air still left, which is necessary to obtain a good cake.

Muffins & Cupcakes: Cooling the Right Way

After baking the muffins or cupcakes in the pan, you must wait for a few minutes but not let them cool down in the pan itself as there might be steam that cannot escape keeping them in the pan.
So, after a few minutes, transfer them to a wire rack where there is a good circulation of air and let them cool down there.

Conclusion

You can become better at baking only when you practice. But during practice, you might make mistakes. Now that you’ve learned about common mistakes, I hope you can master baking while avoiding errors and create delicious treats. Enroll in baking certificate courses to refine your skills and gain professional expertise!