Baking Basics
Creaming butter and sugar is aeration and not mixing
· 4 min read
Clara Lindqvist
Deputy editor, The Last Bite
Clara writes about baking basics, chocolate & sugar, frozen, mostly the parts other people skip and is unreasonably interested in the detail nobody else checks.
22 articles
Frozen
Sorbet is an exercise in freezing point depression
· 4 min read
Frozen
Air is an ingredient in ice cream and it has a price
· 4 min read
Frozen
Fat is what stops a frozen dessert tasting cold and thin
· 4 min read
Frozen
Stabilisers manage water rather than thicken anything
· 4 min read
Pastry
Choux is cooked twice and the second cooking is steam
· 4 min read
Baking Basics
Altitude changes the boiling point and everything follows from that
· 4 min read
Chocolate & Sugar
Why melted chocolate flows the way it does
· 4 min read
Chocolate & Sugar
A nut paste is ground until the oil becomes the liquid
· 4 min read
Pastry
Pastry cream has to boil, and the reason is an enzyme
· 4 min read
Pastry
An enriched dough is a negotiation between fat, sugar and the yeast
· 3 min read
Sweet History
Marzipan followed sugar westward and settled where the almonds were
· 3 min read
Sweet History
The oven with a dial changed what a cake could be
· 3 min read
Baking Basics
Bread goes stale because its starch recrystallises, not because it dries out
· 4 min read
Baking Basics
Doubling a recipe fails because volume and surface do not grow together
· 4 min read
Sweet History
The roller mill made white flour cheap and changed what bakers could assume
· 3 min read
Baking Basics
Sugar substitutes fail at the jobs that were never about sweetness
· 4 min read
Baking Basics
A steamed pudding is cooked at a temperature that cannot rise
· 4 min read
Chocolate & Sugar
A marshmallow is a syrup that has been taught to hold air
· 4 min read
Frozen
Freezer burn is water leaving as vapour without ever melting
· 3 min read
Pastry
A water bath exists because an oven is too fierce for a custard
· 4 min read
Pastry
A macaron shell is a foam that has been deliberately deflated
· 4 min read