Common Basic Baking Terms - Part 3

Before you wonder, no, there won't be a part 4 in this series! Only once I started writing, did I realize there is no way I could put this in one or two posts without having you dozing on your laptop even before you make it halfway through. Here is the last part for you. Images from the internet.

Ribbon stage : This term is commonly used while whipping eggs or yolks and sugar for foam cakes. You need to whip till the egg mixture looks pale, turns thick and forms a ribbon or falls in a ribbon like pattern. When you have whipped for the approximate time as directed and lift the beaters away from the egg mixture, it will fall or drop from the beaters in a flat ribbon like pattern, stays on the surface for a few seconds before disappearing back into the mixture. This shows that the mixture has been sufficiently beaten. Watch the first 30 seconds of this video.

Room temperature, butter : Recipes for butter cakes, cookies etc specify that butter should be at 'room temperature'. This means that the butter should be slightly cool and just pliable. It should only give slightly when pressed with your index finger. It should never be gooey or oily. The stick in the middle seems to be the one at the optimum temperature.

I have never really checked, but it should be 65 degrees F (18 degrees C) and 70 degrees F (21 degrees C) as mentioned in Joy Of Baking. This temperature allows the maximum amount of air to be beaten into your batter. To bring refrigerated butter to room temperature, cut in into cubes and leave it on the counter for about 30 minutes approximately. You could soften it in the microwave, but its very tricky, so best avoided. Rolling butter in between parchment is also done.

Stiff peaks and soft peaks, egg whites : Recipes guide you to whip whites till they form either soft or stiff peaks. As you whip, stop and lift the beaters slowly. If the peaks stand up but droop back (NOT the same as flopping back right away) you have reached the soft peak stage. Beat and wee bit more (30 seconds to a minute) and the peaks will stand up in shiny, pointed peaks and not droop back. Stop right there! If you whip any longer, the whites will dry out and be very difficult to fold in. Adding cream of tartar in the right quantity to the whites helps prevent over beating. 

Watch Rose here  4.30 minutes into the video.

Scant : A scant teaspoon means just about a teaspoon, a teeny little less than a teaspoon (as opposed to a heaping teaspoon). These measures are not really accurate, but work fine as a rough guide where you can add ingredients to taste.

Scrape down: When you mix batter for cakes and the kind, the recipes direct you to 'scrape down the sides'. This is just taking your spatula and turning it around in your mixing bowl, so as to scrape the batter or any unmixed ingredients in the bowl back into the batter. Important as this helps ensure that all the ingredients in your recipe are well incorporated into the batter.

Stir : Your stir together ingredients when you just mix them with a spoon or something similar in a circular motion. Note, this again is just for simple mixing, not for creating volume.

Spoon and sweep method: This is a commonly used method for measuring flour, I used to follow this before I got my kitchen scales.  Keep the measuring cup on a level surface like your counter. Loosen the flour in your flour container, scoop out the flour with a large spoon and spoon it lightly into the cup. Do not shake or tap the cup. When the flour is a bit over the rim, take a knife or a scale and sweep off the excess flour. This gives you 130 grams of flour.

Sift : Sifting dry ingredients in baking is for aerating and incorporating them into each other. You also need to sift cocoa, cornflour and powdered sugar to get rid of lumps before you measure. Since sifting increases volume of flour, pay attention to whether the recipe states the flour as 'sifted flour' or 'flour, sifted'. If its sifted flour, you first sift the flour and then measure. If its flour sifted, you first measure and then sift. This is specially relevant if you do not weigh ingredients and just measure them using standard measuring cups and spoons.  

A cup of all sifted purpose flour weighs 115 grams, a cup of all purpose flour measured by dip and sweep method weighs 140 grams, a cup of APF measured by spoon and sweep method weighs 130 grams. 

  
Simple syrup : This is just water and sugar heated together (till the sugar dissolves) in varying proportions to get different density of the syrup. Used for brushing on foam cakes and the kind to moisten it, to poach fruit etc, the standard usually is a ratio of 1:1. You could always alter the amount of  sugar to taste. Nothing to stop you from flavoring it with herbs or lime or cinnamon or anything you please!

Sponge: This could as a baking term refer to (a) kind of cake (b) a component of yeast dough.

Sponge Cake : One which uses eggs as their main leaveners. Whole eggs as in foam cakes like genoise and fatless sponge or with beaten egg whites as in chiffon cakes. 

Sponge (as part of yeast dough)/ starter : Usually a mix of yeast, liquid and flour that's allowed to sit for some time before adding it to the rest of the dough ingredients. Called by different names, this helps develop more flavor in the bread. Again, slight differences in the components, the consistency, the duration of fermentation, gives these different names. Read this to know more.

Sourdough (above) : Have never tasted one or ventured to bake one yet! Supposedly, in sourdough breads., the dough and the bread have a high level of acidity. The pre-ferment here is a sourdough starter which you cultivate at home mixing flour and water (no yeast) and let natural or wild yeast grow in it. This starter is 'maintained' (a big story!) and used as a leavener for baking breads, either with just the sourdough starter or sourdough starter plus commercial yeast making it a 'mixed starter'.  Sourdough breads have complex flavors and a distinct crumb, more here. I hope to get there someday!

Straight rise : This refers to the method of baking bread the simplest way without using any kind of starter. Just mix all ingredients, let the dough proof twice and bake!

Torte : A torte (as a  kind of cake ) usually refers to one with very little flour, more of ground nuts or bread crumbs.

To 'torte' a cake means to slice the layers into thinner layers for filling and then frosting the cake.

Toss : You normally toss one thing into another so as to coat the ingredients. Cubes of cold butter are tossed in flour to coat the butter with flour while making puff pastry, pie crusts etc.

Temper : One of the reasons why chocolate is tempered is to get that superb gloss to your decorations. Read more about this here. You also temper egg mixture while you make custard and custard based desserts as given under 'Dribble' in my previous post.

Unleavened : Usually used in the context of flat breads and crackers, these are made without any kind of leaveners like baking powder, baking soda, cream of tartar or yeast in them, hence they do not rise much. Chapati or rotis are classic examples of unleavened Indian breads.


Water bath / Bain marie : In my previous post here
 

Whip : You use a hand held electric mixer or a stand mixer for whipping cream or eggs. Whipping helps incorporate air into your cream or eggs.

Whisk : You could whisk liquids to just combine them or whisk vigorously with a wire whisk to incorporate air. Go by the recipe directions and the objective of whisking.

Zest : Removing the outermost part of the rind of citrus fruits like oranges, limes and lemons is called zesting. The zest gives amazing aroma to your bakes. Best tool to use is a citrus zester.

Common Basic Baking Terms - Part 2

Close on the heels of my recent post  Common Basic Baking Terms - Part 1 , comes the next part. This again is my just my understanding and compilation from various sources, please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Dip and sweep method : Different bakers use different methods of measuring flour, one being the dip and sweep method, the other, spoon and sweep method. To measure flour by dip and sweep method, the measuring cup is directly dipped into the flour container to fill it and then leveled out. Flour measured this way weighs 140 grams for a cup as the flour is compacted in the cup when dipped. Its relevant and important to know what method your recipe, book or author uses for measuring flour specially if your recipe doesn't give metric values. Also helps if you measure and not weigh your flour.

Dock : When you do not want your rolled out pie / tart/ cookie/ puff pastry / pizza dough to blister  in the oven as it bakes, you 'dock' the surface of the dough. Docking creates tiny little holes in the pastry, preventing blistering or too much rising of the dough where its not needed. You could use a fork to dock or even better a dough docker which makes your work quick and easy. A dough docker is a spiky little suspicious looking thing which rolls along your dough easily. You may not mind docking your pizza dough, but its great to have a dough docker if you need to bake a large batch of graham crackers or mille fuille  for entertaining.

Dribble : While making custard and custard based dishes, you need to add liquid, like hot milk to whisked eggs. Since you do not want to raise the temperature of the eggs all at once and risk curdling or scrambled eggs, you very slowly pour the hot milk little by little or 'dribble' the hot milk slowly into the egg mixture.

Dust : To dust is to cover the surface with a dry ingredient such as flour or sugar or cocoa for example. You need to dust your baking tin or work surface with flour, dust the top of your Tiramisu with coffee or cocoa, dust the top of your cake  with powdered sugar. Your recipe generally will tell you if you need to be generous or judicious when you dust. Dusting your baking tin with excessive flour unless specified will leave your cake with a slightly undesirable thickish crust. So watch out!

Egg wash : If you have ever wondered what makes the tops or surface of some breads or pastry glisten and shine so invitingly, you are in all probabilities seeing something egg-washed prior to baking. An egg wash is basically just egg and some liquid (like milk or cream) whisked together and brushed on top of bread dough or scones. You normally need very little of the egg wash to cover your dough and you can expect a lot of it to be left over. Think up ways of using it up. If you do not use eggs, a mixture of sugar, oil and milk in equal quantities is supposed to do the trick.

Flour : To 'flour' is to dust (your counter) with flour, lightly or generously as needed and directed.

Fold in : Recipes often direct you to 'fold in'  dry ingredients or whipped egg whites for example into your (cake) batter. Folding in means incorporating ingredients into a mixture very gently but thoroughly, the objective being retaining maximum air which you have carefully created. Its very important to learn this technique as it can make or ruin the texture of your bake, specially in a fatless sponge or genoise or a chiffon cake. Constant practice and probably a few flat sponges is the only way to learn this!

Apart from technique and confidence (don't even remind me about over-confidence and failed cakes please), things which will greatly help here are good quality silicon spatulas (for regular cakes), balloon whisks and slotted skimmers for your genoise or chiffon cakes. A balloon whisk is hard to find here, but you can surely get a good slotted skimmer in your nearby steel store. I recently got myself slotted skimmers in varying sizes for different amounts of batter.

Grease : Greasing is applying grease or fat - oil, butter (preferably with a silicon brush) or using a non-stick spray on your baking tray or muffin cups or cake tins to aid easy release of your bakes from the tin. I like using oil for this. Greasing your pan gorgeously while baking pizza or focaccia helps get a crispy crust, while just enough should be alright when you bake cakes and breads. So you 'grease and flour' and line your tins with baking parchment - all for a neat surface and easy release. 

Heaping : A heaping cup or spoon of something means just a little over a cup or spoon. As opposed to a scant cup or spoon (below)

Kneading : A very important step in bread baking, kneading is a way of developing gluten in the dough, which helps trap gases produced by yeast aiding its rise. So adequate kneading and right kneading is important for good texture of  bread. Practice, practice! A video again of Rose Beranbaum here

Laminated dough : This is dough made with alternating layers of dough and fat, usually butter. Butter is enclosed in the dough and then rolled out, folded (or given 'turns') and re-rolled repeatedly to multiply the number of such layers. The butter melts in the oven creating flaky layers. Puff pastry, croissants and danish pastry are classic examples of  laminated dough.

Line : To line is to cover the base and sometimes sides of your tins / baking sheets with baking parchment. Avoid using wax paper for this as the wax often melts. Lining helps easy release and also get a nice smooth bottom surface and sides, not to mention easy washing up later. Watch this video to see how to cut out and line tins. Though I never really get around to doing it, its helps and is a joy to have parchment cut into standard pan sizes, ready to use. You could also buy these online.

Leavener / Leavening : To leaven means to 'make light or to raise'. A leavener is an agent which helps raise or lighten your bake.  Classic examples are baking powder, baking soda, commercial and wild yeast. Foam cakes and some cakes like Queen Of Sheba, Almost Fudge Gateau have no chemical leaveners, whipped eggs/egg whites do the job.

Mise en place  (meez en plas) : Though not  a baking term as such, this is a French phrase which means ' putting things in place'. As we see in the cookery shows on television. All ingredients measured and lined up. Helps a lot in making sure you have all ingredients for your bake without having to realize you don't have enough eggs as you melt the chocolate.

  
Marble : The familiar marbled effect with 2 or more colors. Here you will come across this term in marbling cake batters or creating a marbled effect for decorative purposes in desserts. You alternate spoonfuls of batters of two colors in the pan and use a toothpick or skewer or knife to gently swirl the batter. Check this video here  Or marble as shown in this video.  This creates a very interesting effect in the baked cake and each time the 'design' is different.  For a ginko pattern, just scrape all the batter of one one color in your bundt pan in one layer, top with all the batter of the other color and bake. Important to temper your enthusiasm for swirling or you will regret it!

Pipe : Apart from piping butter cream, whipped cream or ganache, you also pipe batter for making ladyfingers or Savioradi , macarons, pavlova, dacquoise etc. Piping bags are very handy to have for this purpose, though cones can be made with parchment too ( too much work, not as convenient). I like disposable bags and slightly large ones at that. You could snip a large one to make it small but not the other way round. Small bags tend to ooze out the cream or batter as you close the other end. A messy situation you could avoid. Most baking supplies store stock these. For very tiny quantities of ganache or cream (while decorating) small ziplock bags are best.

Pre heat : Pre-heating is heating your oven to the needed temperature before placing your bake in. This is to ensure that the oven already is at the temperature you need when you bake goes inside. There are recipes though very rare, which need you to place the bake in a cold oven and then start heating it. Typically OTGs take longer to pre-heat and convection microwaves pre-heat really fast. Read more on this.

Proof : Proofing in bread baking means ensuring your active dried yeast is active, alive and kicking. You normally need to proof active dried yeast, whereas its not necessary to proof instant yeast. Read more about this here. After the dough is kneaded, letting it rise till it doubles is also called proofing. Letting the shaped dough double in the pan is also called proofing!

Pre-ferment, poolish, starter : Bread dough is usually made by mixing all of the flour, yeast and liquid ingredients together at one go. Sometimes, bakers use a mix of commercial yeast (as opposed to wild yeast, this in the next part) flour and water, let it stand for sometime (as indicated in the recipe), sometimes overnight, before mixing it with the rest of the dough ingredients. This helps jump-start the flavor and the rising power of bread.

Poolish is a kind of pre-ferment which is commonly accepted to indicate a combination of equal weights of water, flour and a very small amount of yeast - From King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking Book. 

Common Basic Baking Terms - Part 1

I try to re-surface! I have been like a cat on a hot tin roof as I have shifted most of my baking stuff to my baking kitchen but not everything else is in place yet for me to start baking properly.  But the urge to bake and blog remains - always! A good time perhaps for another post in the series for the beginners about a few terms commonly used in baking. Complied with reference to books and various sources on the internet. Images from the web.

Aerate : Aeration is the process by which air is circulated through, mixed with or dissolved in a liquid or substance - Wikipedia. Optimum aeration (by mechanical or and chemical means) in your cake helps get one with more volume and a better texture. Sifting and creaming (more below) also aerate your batter.

Baking blind : This is basically pre-baking your pie/tart crust fully or partially without the filling in it.  You roll out the chilled crust and  fit it into the pie / tart tin, then prick it all over with a fork to prevent it from puffing up. The crust is then covered with parchment or aluminum foil and weighed down with dried beans or pie weights and baked partially or fully as needed in your recipe. Once the crust is completely cool, you could brush the crust with whisked egg white ( I would bake again for a few minutes if I did this) to prevent it from becoming soggy when its further baked with the filling.

Brush : When we want the top of our bread loaves soft, we brush the top with melted butter or oil. A baked genoise or fatless sponge is brushed with sugar syrup to keep it moist. You use a brush for this as this as it helps use just enough fat or just enough syrup, help spread more evenly to moisten your cake without making it soggy.  You similarly brush whisked egg or egg white or herbed butter. Best to use is a good quality silicon brush.

Bain marie : Pronounced (BAN-mah-REE) this is French term for a water bath.  A method used for using indirect gentle heat for delicate heating / baking, while keeping your bake moist from the steam. A more harsh or direct heat in cases like this may curdle your custard for example or dry out your bake or seize your chocolate. Baked custards, custard based puddings, mousse cakes and cheesecakes are classic examples for using a water bath. Chocolate is often melted in a bain marie but in this case, the bowl of chocolate sits over a pan of simmering water.

You could use a large tray or baking tin with sides about 2-3'' high depending on the height of your ramekin or cake tin. This gives you enough height to pour the hot water in without it spilling out and enough around the ramekin or tin to come halfway through.

 Line your tin with an old kitchen towel uniformly and then place your tin inside. With the tin in the oven, pour the hot water (with a kettle) in the lined tin. The towel helps the ramekins or tin not move around as you bake - more relevant in a convection microwave. In case of longer baking periods, the water level may come down and you would need to replenish it as needed. If using a spring form tin, warp the bottom of the tin on the outside with double layer of heavy duty aluminum foil to prevent seepage into the  tin.

Blend : You blend when you mix 2 or more ingredients to just mix them thoroughly and uniformly, so that the ingredients make a homogenous mixture. The aim here is to just mix ingredients really well and not to achieve volume or aerate. Your tools depending on the ingredients and quantity would be a fork, a tiny whisk or a large whisk. For example, when you need to make muffins, you want to combine the liquid ingredients like egg, oil, vanilla, milk and orange zest. You take them all in a small bowl and blend them with a whisk to combine them well - without wanting or needing to create air.

Beat : Beating is an action much more vigorous than blending. The aim is to achieve volume while beating eggs, to make the sugar and butter light and fluffy when you cream, to activate some amount of gluten in batter breads.

Butter : Coating your tin or pan with butter either lightly or generously as directed in the recipe. You could of course use non-stick spray or even ghee or oil for this. Buttering helps easy release of the baked goods from the pan.

Brûlée : Brûlée means ' burnt'. To brulee something is to burn it, the top specifically as in caramelizing the sugar on top of custard to make a Crème brûlée or for baking a meringue pie. Tool commonly used is a blowtorch . When you top your custard with sugar and burn it with the flames of the torch, the sugar caramelizes giving the creamy smooth custard a crunchy topping. Good that I don't have a blow torch yet or I would be tempted to bake one right away!

Creaming : Creaming is basically beating butter (at room temperature) first on low speed till smooth with a wooden spoon/ spatula/ hand mixer or with the paddle attachment of a stand mixer. The sugar is then added in a stream and both are creamed together. Start on low speed and move to medium high if using a hand mixer. Ideally you have to cream till the mixture is blended together perfectly, is light and fluffy, pale in color and not grainy anymore when rubbed between your fingers. This may take 4-5 minutes or even more on medium high speed of your hand mixer.

The jagged edges of the sugar when beaten with the butter help create air pockets which get trapped in the fat. Creaming increases the volume of the butter though not dramatically. The air bubbles thus trapped expand in the oven heat, give the cake a light texture. The other liquid ingredients, eggs, baking powder/soda work alongside for more leavening (raising and aerating the batter). Be wary of over or under creaming.

The video below will give you an idea.

 

Cube : To cube butter is to cut butter into chunks of specific size as needed in the recipe. Very important for making pie crust, puff pastry, scones and the kind. You need the butter to be cubed according to the recipe specifications to help achieve even distribution in some cases or to prevent one huge mass of it from turning a greasy mess in the process of creaming. Or for the reason that the butter still needs to remain in largish bits and pieces or tiny pieces at the end of the pre-baking procedure. The chilled butter when in chunks or bits in the pie dough or puff pastry dough melts in the oven giving you a tender or flaky crust.

My favorite way to cube butter is using a metal dough scraper. Its sharpish, very firm and easy to grip, slices right down from the top of the slab to the bottom (mostly!). I like to cube butter when cold but soft enough to cut easily. I cube it (with a scale to be sure) and then refrigerate it again to chill before using for puff and pie crusts.

Cut in : This again is an often used term while making pie crusts and scones. This often means taking the flour mixture (in a large bowl or on your counter), dumping in the chilled cubed butter on it, roughly tossing it to coat the butter with flour. Then you use a pastry blender or two forks or knives or a chilled metal dough scraper to 'cut' or kind of chop the butter into the flour. You are basically working the butter into the dry ingredients to make a rough mixture of largish or small pieces of butter and flour or a sandy mixture as needed.  

The aim at the end is to make a blended mixture which still has cold, unmelted chunks of butter in it, the key is working quickly and gently before the butter melts. A food processor is supposed to make a very easy job of this as well. I was quite pleased with the results my metal dough scraper gave when I made this crust. A good job of cutting in the fat helps get a flaky and tender end product.


Here is a video which shows 'cutting in', jump to the video after 2 minutes to see the technique. Rose Beranbaum uses a pastry cutter here. In this video, David Ogonowski uses a combination of different techniques, see how he uses a dough scraper to 'cut in' the butter. Quick jump to the video after 3.35 seconds to see the technique.

Caramelize :When you heat sugar, it caramelizes and turns a golden liquid or caramel. When you saute onions in fat on low heat for a long time, it turns brown and caramelizes. Great topping for your focaccias, crackers and the kind.

Coat the back of a spoon : Egg based custard recipes often direct you to cook the mixture on the stove top till it 'coats the back of a spoon'. If you dip a spoon in your custard and take it out, run your finger across the back, it will leave a trail. Your finger will form a 'path' and the custard doesn't run through this path. The custard is at the point cooked enough and further cooking may curdle it.

Crumb : Slice a loaf of bread or cake. The inside part of it is called as the crumb. This mainly refers to the texture - as in a moist or tender crumb.


Common Basic Baking Terms Part 2 - Please check this post

Common Basic Baking Terms Part 3 - here