Baking with Less Sugar (4 page)

10. Helps yeast grow by giving it food.
Yeasts are one-celled organisms that we use in baking breads and yeasted breakfast pastries to make them fluffy and light. They work by eating the sugars that exist in dough and then expelling gas as the by-product of all of that eating. When they expel gas, it causes the bread dough to rise and become full of air. When you are making bread, you add a little sugar to give the yeasts something to eat. Sugars naturally exist in the combination of flour and water as well, so bread dough made without sugar will still manage to find sugars to eat—they just take a little longer to proof.

And you thought sugar just made things taste sweet!

Following is an overview of some basic ingredients, equipment, and baking tips that I use in this book. Some of the stock sweeteners are listed in the “substitutions” section rather than here. This is my baking arsenal—with these items and lessons at hand, you can make practically anything!

These appear in the general order of most common appearance in many baking recipes.

1. All-purpose flour.
We always bake with King Arthur unbleached unbromated flour. We try to use ingredients with as few chemicals as possible and we are lucky to have easy access to unbleached all-purpose flour through King Arthur. That said, you can use a bleached all-purpose flour for these recipes with no issues; just make sure it is fresh. Yes, flour can go rancid if left out for long periods of time. I store mine in the refrigerator in an airtight container if I know I won't be baking for a while.

2. Cake flour.
In addition to all-purpose flour, we also use cake flour. It has a lower protein content than all-purpose flour, which basically means that it creates a more tender product.

3. Unsalted butter.
I
always
bake with unsalted butter. Salted butters have varying amounts of salt in them, leaving the salt level of your pastry up to chance. Start with the blank slate of unsalted butter and then add the salt to accent your dessert as indicated. Unsalted butter is also fresher; without salt as a preservative, unsalted butter has a very short shelf life, which means that when you purchase it in the store, it has only been on the shelves a short while. Salted butter, on the other hand, can sit and sit and sit in the dairy case for months at a time because it is preserved. That doesn't sound so fresh to me! If you are not using your butter within the expiration date, store it in the freezer to extend its shelf life.

4. Sugar.
White sugar and brown sugar are the most common sweeteners in a baking kitchen. White sugar is made from either sugar cane or beets and refined until it is pure white and rid of all impurities. Brown sugar is sugar before it has been completely refined; in other words, it still has some molasses clinging to it, the source of its characteristic color and caramel-y flavor. Some sugar manufacturers make brown sugar by mixing in molasses with refined white sugar. White sugar should be stored in a covered container at room temperature. Brown sugar, which is soft with moisture, should be stored in an airtight container at room temperature as well. If your brown sugar turns hard, there are a few ways to soften it: either place an apple wedge or a slice of white bread in the container and leave it overnight (the moisture in the apple or bread will soften the brown sugar), or put it in the microwave topped with a wet paper towel for 20 to 30 seconds on high power until it softens.

5. Eggs.
We use large eggs in all of our baking. There's nothing wrong with extra-large or medium or any other size at all. Just like there's nothing wrong with being a size 2 or 8 or 12! But if you are sizing a dress for a mannequin, you need to know exactly what size to make so that your dress fits all standard mannequins. When baking, it is the same: you want to know that the size of the egg you are using is the same size as used to test the recipe. With baking (as you've started to see already in reading about the science of sugar), everything matters, so if you are adding more or less egg (that is, a bigger or smaller egg), then it could throw off the proportions of your recipe.

6. Milk.
I always have a jug of whole milk in the refrigerator, not just for our morning tea and cereal but also for baking. You can substitute 2 percent milk with little loss in flavor; however, if you substitute 1 percent or skim milk, you'll be missing the flavor that the fat in whole milk brings to your final product. In other words, use whole milk or 2 percent milk for the best results in baking.

7. Heavy cream.
Not quite the same as whipping cream, which is often sold next to heavy cream, the latter has a 36 to 40 percent fat content, making it especially luscious and rich in desserts. I use it for custards and ice creams and also, most important, for making crème fraîche
(see Tips, page 24)
.

8. Baking powder.
This chemical leavening powerhouse is actually baking soda plus cream of tartar combined together as one leavener. It reacts to liquid and heat and helps make your pastries rise. Store baking powder in a cool, dark place; it doesn't last forever, so test it before using by putting a big pinch in a cup of hot water to see if it fizzes. If it does, it's good to go, and if not, it's time to buy a new can. Baking powder is not interchangeable with baking soda (following).

9. Baking soda.
This white powdery ingredient is a common chemical leavener in baking that works by reacting with an acid. When you mix baking soda with lemon juice, buttermilk, crème fraîche, brown sugar, molasses, chocolate, or any other acidic ingredient, it fizzes up and causes bubbles. You can't necessarily see the bubbles in your cake or cookie batter, but know that they are there, helping your final product turn out light and airy instead of hard like a brick. Store baking soda in a cool, dark spot and test it before using by adding a pinch to vinegar or lemon juice to see if it bubbles up.

10. Kosher salt.
Many people don't think about the importance of salt in baking. It does the same thing for sweets as it does for savories—highlights flavors. Especially when baking with vanilla, lemon, and chocolate, salt keeps desserts from tasting flat and makes them stand out. Diamond Crystal is the brand we use in our kitchen. I learned to bake in professional kitchens where my chefs only seasoned with coarse kosher salt, so it was the only salt we had in the kitchen. It has a cleaner flavor than table salt, and its larger crystals make it easier to control the amount of salt you add to your food. Thus in all of my pastry recipes, I use only kosher salt. If you only have table salt, you will want to use just over half the amount of salt listed, since it's a lot finer and thus takes less space in the measuring spoon.

11. Chocolate.
If there is one ingredient that I would encourage all bakers to splurge on and buy the very best of, it would be chocolate. We are a nation of chocolate lovers and once you start working with high-quality chocolates for both baking and eating, you'll realize how a
lower-quality chocolate is just a shadow of what a great one can be. Unsweetened chocolate is just chocolate liquor (ground cacao beans) without any added sugar or dairy. Bittersweet to semisweet chocolates contain varying amounts of sugar, with the higher the percentage of cacao content listed on the chocolate, the more bitter the chocolate. Unsweetened chocolate is sometimes listed as 99 percent (it contains less than 1 percent vanilla and the emulsifier lecithin), whereas semisweet chocolate ranges around 50 to 60 percent and bittersweet is roughly everything else in between. The percentage refers to the amount of cocoa liquor in the chocolate, leaving the remaining composition of the chocolate to be mostly sugar. And then there's milk and white chocolate. Milk chocolate has even more sugar, less chocolate liquor, and, of course, milk, whereas white chocolate has no chocolate liquor whatsoever (chocolate snobs will remind you that it is technically not chocolate) and instead is composed of cocoa butter, milk, sugar, and flavorings. For this book we focus on using only bittersweet chocolate with a cacao content of 68 percent. The brands I like best are Tcho, Valrhona, Mast Brothers, and Green & Black. You can often find these brands in gourmet grocery stores or specialty chocolate shops, or you can easily purchase them online as well.

12. Nuts.
Assorted nuts—peanuts, almonds, cashews, pecans, walnuts, and pistachios—are wonderful additions to many cookies and cakes and other treats. Store these in the refrigerator or freezer since they are full of natural oils, which can go rancid if left out at room temperature for too long. I always toast my nuts for baking and list that in the beginning of the recipes that use them.

13. Yeast.
The two most common types of yeast are active dry yeast, which often is sold in little packages in the refrigerated section of the grocery store, and fresh cake yeast, which is sold in little squares next to the butter and cream in the dairy section. Active dry is usually easier for home cooks because it has a long shelf life; fresh cake goes moldy after a few weeks so unless you know you'll be using it soon, it's often easier to buy active dry. Instant active dry yeast is interchangeable for active dry; as its name suggests, it acts faster than regular active dry yeast, and you don't need to add it to warm water before using as you do the regular.

Many of these recipes rely on basic equipment that you likely have in your kitchen already: baking sheets, bowls, spatulas, whisks, knives, parchment paper. Here I list a few things that might not be on your radar—but should be!

1. Basic pans.
If you are just outfitting your kitchen, here are the essentials you need to bake the recipes in this book and most any other baking book:

• Standard 12-cup muffin tin
  
• 9-by-5-in [23-by-13-cm] glass, metal, or ceramic loaf pan
  
• 9-by-13-in [23-by-33-cm] glass, metal, or ceramic baking or roasting pan
  
• 8-in [20-cm] or 9-in [23-cm] cake pan with sides at least 2 in [5 cm] high
  
• A baking sheet that has rimmed sides and measures 13 by 18 in [33 by 46 cm] and/or a rimmed jelly-roll pan that measures 10 by 15 in [25 by 38 cm] or 12 by 17 in [30.5 by 43 cm]
  
• 9-in [23-cm] ceramic or glass pie plate or a few disposable aluminum pie tins
  

2. Bench scraper.
A rectangular metal tool with either a wooden or plastic handle, these are indispensable for cleaning your work station and for
cutting and trimming bread and tart doughs. I sometimes use them as emergency spatulas when I need to lift or transfer something from a baking sheet.

3. Microplane.
When I first started baking professionally, the project of zesting of lemons or limes with a chunky box grater or a channel lemon zester was usually doled out as a punishment for not cleaning the mixer properly or coming to work late. It was a laborious task that I dreaded. Since the rise of the Microplane, however, you can't keep me away from the chore of lemon zesting. A long, skinny metal wand with multiple sharp perforations, a Microplane makes quick and easy work of zesting citrus, whole nutmeg, cinnamon sticks, ginger, and, for savory purposes, hard cheeses.

4. Mixer.
A stand mixer is a big help in a lot of cookie, cake, and bread recipes. It is a bit of an indulgence, but if you bake with any regularity (or hope to), it opens the door to a lot of recipes that are more easily prepared with the help of its powerful motor. You can, of course, whip egg whites and cream butter and sugar together and knead dough all by hand. It will take a lot longer, but you'll develop some good biceps.

5. Offset spatula.
You don't
need
an offset spatula unless you plan on doing a lot of cake decorating, but I list it here because I find that a medium offset spatula can be super-useful for a lot of other things as well. Mine has a wooden handle and a metal blade that is offset from the handle so that if I'm frosting a cake, my knuckles don't get in the way of the cake. I feel incomplete in the kitchen when I'm baking without one nearby. It's really an extension of my hand. I use it to frost things, move things around, clean off my cutting board or counter, run around the side of a cake or loaf pan or individual muffins to help dislodge them, and even cut and trim things. It's such a handy tool and I have several of them in the kitchen (in case one goes missing!).

6. Piping bag.
I like a plastic piping bag that is 18 to 20 in [46 to 50 cm] because it is then large enough to fill with batter or buttercream and still have a large cuff that I can twist to prevent the filling from coming up over the top. We use disposable bags that we rinse and reuse until they spring a leak. Cloth and wax-lined plastic versions are commonly found in stores; be sure to wash these well after each use so they don't smell funky when they dry. If you don't have a piping bag, you can use a heavy-duty, resealable plastic bag with one corner snipped off.

7. Scale.
I am so dependent upon my digital kitchen scale that measures in grams and has a tare function (you can zero it out after you have weighed something on it, allowing you to continue to weigh different ingredients into the same bowl) that I can hardly believe when I hear someone does not bake with a scale. That's like saying you still use a typewriter to write letters (and that you still
write
letters!), or you don't brush your teeth with a toothbrush. Invest in a kitchen scale. I promise you won't regret it. Your recipe measurements will always be accurate, and you'll improve your baking significantly with this one easy purchase.

8. Sieve.
A fine wire-mesh strainer or sieve is essential when making custards and ice cream for a smooth, silky final product. Get one with tiny holes so it catches all of the bits of overcooked eggs and shell and such.

1. How to scrape a vanilla bean.
First, make sure your vanilla bean is soft and plump. If it is hard and brittle, it has dried out and you'll want to rehydrate it by soaking it in warm water for a few hours before using. (To prevent beans from drying, store them in an airtight container in a cool, dry, dark place.) Lay the bean on its side and press it flat so it lies on the counter. Using the tip of a paring knife, pierce it at one end and then slide the knife down the length of the bean, splitting it in half until you get to the other end. Spread the bean out so the seeds are exposed and then scrape the seeds from the bean with the back of the knife. Scrape the seeds that collect on the knife into your batter or custard base or whatever. Scrape the vanilla bean again to ensure you get all of the potent seeds. The scraped pod can be thrown into a bin of sugar and in a few days, you'll have vanilla sugar.