Sokol Gail - Baking with Success

Baking
with
Success

Gail Sokol

Photography by Rebekah B. Sokol

Copyright 2017 Gail Sokol.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Photography by Rebekah B. Sokol.

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-1177-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-1175-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-1176-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017906580

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 5/10/2017

To HMS
the Paul to my Julia.

Contents

My philosophy about baking is quite simple. I believe that the art of baking is not difficult as many people think. It is actually quite simple and enjoyable. There is an order to it.

I have been teaching people of all ages, kids to adults, how to bake for over sixteen years. There is nothing I would rather do than teach. That is why I wrote this second book. My first book, About Professional Baking , is really a textbook. Baking with Success is specifically for the home baker who wants to get started with baking or wishes to improve as a baker by having the art of baking demystified.

As someone who taught herself how to bake as a kid, and even as a professional baker, I have sometimes made mistakes when I baked. In this book, I hope to give you the skills you need to bake with success by passing on an understanding of exactly how the ingredients react to each other to create the most wonderful baked goods. A little baking science, some common sense, and some hard-earned lessons I have experienced during my journey of learning how to bake will set you up for your own successful journey and love of baking as well.

It is so satisfying when I can show someone a method of mixing or of shaping dough or even of frosting a cake. My student watches spellbound as the thing that appeared so hard is made simple with a quick demonstration or lesson.

Over the years, I have had many baking failures. I have also improved my baking skills because of those failures. When a student messes up a recipe, I secretly enjoy it, because it inevitably leads to a teaching moment. Students never make the same mistake again once they know why it happened.

My favorite story comes from a class I taught on yeast breads. A few months later, a woman from the class wrote and told me she won a local baking competition using the techniques I had taught her. She got the ribbon, but I was the true winner. The knowledge I imparted to her gave her the courage to enter a competition she never thought she could win. I taught her something worthwhile and sustainable during that class that she can use for the rest of her life.

Not only does baking taste good once the item you are making is baked and finished, but it is so wonderful to share the creation you made with your own two hands with those you love. When I ready the kitchen for bakingmaybe taking some butter out of the fridge to get it to room temperature or whisking together my dry ingredients or getting out my KitchenAid electric mixerthere is an excitement in the air. My family knows that something wonderful is coming.

Baking with success is easy and attainable, and is what I am all about. The recipes in this book are some of my most favorite. There are recipes I always go back to and have relied on throughout my career, and there are some newer recipes that Ive developed as well. They are all tried-and-true and always get rave reviews. I hope you enjoy using this book as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Many of these recipes have links to my YouTube videos. Since my baking is constantly in evolution, I have improved on some of the recipes since the videos were shot. The recipes in this book are the most up-to-date.

To Drue, my youngest daughter: thank you for all of your valuable input, feedback on recipes, and never-ending support in all of my endeavors.

To Rebekah, my eldest daughter, who devoted many hours to painstakingly photographing my baked goods, always adding her own creative spin.

You are both loved and appreciated so much!

Refer to the sections on measuring properly by volume and weight as needed when measuring your ingredients.

All recipes in this book use large eggs.

Eggs should always be cracked open into a measuring cup or bowl and never broken over an electric mixer, where pieces of eggshell can fall into the moving bowl.

I use only unsalted butter to control the amount of sodium in the recipe.

High-quality baked goods can be made from semisweet chocolate chips from Nestl or Hershey as well as more expensive brands like Ghirardelli, Lindt, Callebaut, and Guittard.

King Arthur Flour is the only brand of flour I use, including all-purpose, white whole-wheat, and cake flours.

The flour is never sifted, but dry ingredients are almost always whisked together to thoroughly combine them and prevent any clumping.

Any milk can be used in recipes calling for milk. Ive successfully used whole milk, 2 percent, 1 percent, fat-free, and lactose-free milks with high-quality results.

I use fast-rising yeast, which can be blended directly in with the dry ingredients.

Refer to the section on The Most Important Ingredients in Baking to understand how ingredients interact in the baking process.

If there is a special way to make sure that a recipe comes out right, I will give you some of my tricks in what I call Tips for Success, which follow the recipe.

If a recipes direction states to grease a pan, nonstick cooking spray, butter, or oil may also be used.