Bittman - How to Bake Everything: Simple Recipes for the Best Baking

How to Cook Everything, in all its installments, has one guiding principle: Everyone can, and should, cookand feel comfortable doing it. The world is a better place when were in the kitchenwhen 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 mewhich 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 isnt 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 ovena raw, wet batter or dough goes in; tender, golden treats emergeproduces a particular sense of pride, even a thrillwhether youre 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 dont 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 theyll 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 cant 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, Ill set the record straight about some baking myths. Ill help you stock your kitchen with the essential ingredients and equipment for baking, and teach you the fundamental techniques that youll use in the recipes that follow. With simple ingredient charts, advice on the tools you need (and the ones you dont), and other basic tips, this chapter gives you all you need to get started.

Baking uses the dry heat of an oven to thoroughly cook foods while creating a firm, browned exterior. Thats also the definition of roasting, which isnt covered in this book for one main reason: Most things you roast are already solidthink vegetables or meatwhile 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.