How to Bake Everything: Simple Recipes for the Best Baking - Mark Bittman (2016)

Introduction

How to Cook Everything, in all its installments, has one guiding principle: Everyone can, and should, cook—and feel comfortable doing it. The world is a better place when we’re in the kitchen—when we choose the ingredients ourselves, lessen our dependence on industrial agriculture and processed foods, participate firsthand in the preparation, and share the experience with others. This book is structured to make baking as approachable and enjoyable for you as it is for me—which is to say very.

By focusing on core recipes with numerous opportunities for variation, my hope is not to make you an expert recipe follower (as so many baking books do), but to help you become a confident, intuitive baker, capable of discerning which rules you must follow and which of the many you can and should break. From foolproof drop cookies to perfect croissants, the recipes in this book offer something for everyone.

Baking isn’t magic, like all cooking. But sometimes, and especially to the novice, it can seem that way. Nowhere else in the kitchen can you start with such a small arsenal of humble ingredients and spin them into so many remarkable things. And the transformation that happens in the oven—a raw, wet batter or dough goes in; tender, golden treats emerge—produces a particular sense of pride, even a thrill—whether you’re an experienced baker or a first-timer. The smell that fills the house is often reason enough to take up baking.

Baking is fundamentally communal. To bake is to celebrate and to share: We take muffins to our new neighbors, swap cookies at the holidays, cut cakes at our weddings, eat pies on Thanksgiving. Since baked goods are hardly a necessity, they always feel a little indulgent. A brown-bag lunch is improved by a cookie, and dinner is made complete with a loaf of bread. Yes, pretty much every conceivable kind of baked good is readily available at bakeries, supermarkets, and even convenience stores, but making them yourself is not only gratifying but a superior way to bring more real food into your diet and that of your loved ones. Baking may be an indulgence, but your own baked goods are always a step above commercially produced ones.

Some people mistakenly view cooking and baking as opposites: They believe the former welcomes improvisation and rule breaking while the latter is unforgiving, meticulous, and super-scientific. Even perfectly capable cooks may decide they don’t have the time, skills, or patience necessary to bake successfully. But it should go without saying that if you can cook you can bake. Many aspects of baking, from flavoring a cake to filling a pie to the frosting or sauce you use to top it all off, are so easy that they’ll become second nature in no time. In baking, you still have creative license, and the payoff is almost always delicious and crowd-pleasing.

Of course, some details are nonnegotiable. You can’t drastically reduce or increase some ingredients without noticing an effect. But so many people of all different skill levels start baking and fall in love with it precisely because of these simple, predictable rules. When you combine flour with yeast and water and time and heat, it will become bread. Cook sugar long enough and it becomes caramel.

To set you up for success, I’ll set the record straight about some baking myths. I’ll help you stock your kitchen with the essential ingredients and equipment for baking, and teach you the fundamental techniques that you’ll use in the recipes that follow. With simple ingredient charts, advice on the tools you need (and the ones you don’t), and other basic tips, this chapter gives you all you need to get started.

What Is Baking?

Baking uses the dry heat of an oven to thoroughly cook foods while creating a firm, browned exterior. That’s also the definition of roasting, which isn’t covered in this book for one main reason: Most things you roast are already solid—think vegetables or meat—while baking usually starts with either a semiliquid or a fairly wet solid, like batter, custard, or dough. The higher moisture that you find in most baking is responsible for the texture and delicacy you get in the finished product. Heat causes that moisture to steam and jump-starts all the other chemical reactions: raising the dough, melting the chocolate, browning the crust, and so on.

If you’ve glanced at the table of contents, though, you’ve noticed that my definition of baking in this book is broader than that. It includes all kinds of desserts—not just those that are actually baked, but also things like ice cream, puddings, and candies. It ropes in sweet breakfast items—pancakes, waffles, French toast, and doughnuts—as well as the world of savory pies, crackers, and breads. From American favorites to global inspiration, buttery pastry to vegan, gluten-free, and health-conscious alternatives, you’ll find that every base is covered. In short, I’ve included all the recipes I’d want to find in a big baking book.

Baking with Kids

Cooking with children is a great way to spend time with them, teach them a crucial life skill, and help them to create things of which they can be proud. Baking is the place many kids start, not only because all of the measuring required provides a practical math lesson but because whisks and mixing bowls are a lot less dangerous (and nerve-wracking) than sharp knives and sizzling skillets. Given kids’ taste for sweets, they’ll more than likely enjoy eating the final product, which means they’ll develop a positive relationship with cooking at an early age.

How to Use This Book

This is a big book—these elements will help you get the most of it:

Lexicons, sometimes in chart form and sometimes in text, run down key ingredients or equipment, from flours and sugars to cake pans.

Basics provide a mini-course in techniques, equipment, and major categories of recipes.

Timing is always noted at the top of each recipe. Many baking recipes involve some passive time—chilling, rising, setting—and I’ll always mention that to give a sense of how much active time is involved.

Variations are abundant. I’ve always felt it was easier for people to learn if I gave one cookie recipe with a number of easy twists rather than twenty separate, similar cookie recipes. You’ll find simple variations and conversions throughout the whole book.

Lists, sidebars, charts, flowcharts, and infographics build on and anticipate recipe variations and act as a springboard for further experimentation and creativity by breaking recipes down into their important components. They elaborate on ideas presented in the main text, offer ways to create new flavor combinations, explain adapting recipes for vegan or gluten-free diets, and provide other ways to apply one technique to a variety of dishes.

The appendix is bursting with useful lists. It’s loaded with favorite recipes for various occasions, time frames, and more. There is a section on how to make recipes vegan and another on my way to satisfy gluten-free cravings, plus at-a-glance ingredient substitutions, how to freeze baked goods for later, and a guide to creating out-of-this world flavor combinations. Don’t miss it.

The index gives a comprehensive look at everything this book has to offer. It’s a fast way to find what you’re looking for and also enables you to search by flavor, main ingredient, or category.