Practical Baking Tips and Equipment for Beginners

Now that you know how I got into baking, let’s talk about some of the baking tips I follow to ensure an overall good baking experience.  These are tips that I’ve gathered from some of the bakers I follow (Benjamin The Baker and Baker Bettie are two of my favorites).

First Things First

Before you begin any adventure in the kitchen, you’ll want to be prepared and organized.  Let me introduce you to the French phrase mise en place.  Mise en place means to put everything in place, which means you’ll want to prepare and arrange all your ingredients prior to baking.  It’s a phrase every professional chef lives by.

There are five (5) principles in mise en place.  The first principle is to know your recipe.  Knowing your recipe serves multiple purposes:

1. It will allow you to take stock of what’s in your pantry. The last thing you’ll want to do while you’re baking is run to the grocery store to buy any missing ingredients.
2. It allows you to know what equipment you’ll need.
3. It will tell you how much time is needed (prep, resting/chilling, and actual baking).

I’m going to expand on the first principle.  Knowing your recipe also means, in my opinion, understanding the terminology and techniques stated in the recipe.  If you don’t know what folding means, for example, then look up the technique and write down its meaning and watch a video on YouTube to visually understand how the technique is used.

The second and third principles of mise en place are preparing and arranging your ingredients.  Preparing your ingredients means chopping, mincing, weighing, softening, etc. the ingredients in the recipe.  After you’ve done all of that, place your ingredients in appropriate size bowls and position them in the order listed in the recipe.  This is going to create a laundry list of items to wash after you’re done, but you’ll be thankful for the level of organization this creates.

The fourth principle of mise en place, which I think should be the second principle, is to prepare your workstation.  I live in a small apartment, so my workstation is already prepared before I begin preparing and arranging my ingredients.  Like a lot of people in New York City, I keep baking and cooking pans in my oven.  I remove those right after I’ve cleared my kitchen table, my official workstation, and then I preheat my oven to the temperature stated in the recipe.

The final principle of mise en place, which, again, I think should come before preparing and arranging your ingredients, is to arrange your tools.  Personally, I take everything I need out after I’ve cleared my workstation.  I arrange my baking equipment and tools on one side of my workstation to ensure I have plenty of space for my ingredients on the other side.

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Think of mise en place as a physical outline for your baking.  Good writers don’t just type words up, and then publish them.  They create an outline to streamline their ideas.  Mise en place is that outline for baking.  Because baking is “like a scientific experiment, combining the reactions of chemistry…,” you’ll want to be prepared and organized to ensure this wonderful experiment is met with success.

As you advance, it’s possible you’ll begin to measure all your dry ingredients in one bowl after each tare of the scale (zeroing out the weight of the previous ingredient) to avoid washing all those extra bowls and tools.  If you’re just starting out, don’t do this.  Begin by following the principles of mise en place.  Get accustomed to separating your ingredients and getting into a nice workflow.

Let’s Bake!

Alors!  You understand mise en place, and now you’re ready to bake.  Make sure that your oven is set to the temperature in the recipe.  You don’t want to under- or overbake your baked goods.

Pay attention to when you put your baked goods in the oven.  I strongly recommend having more than one timer.  Make sure to set them.  Last weekend, I forgot to set one of my timers even though I entered the time I needed.

Baking requires your full attention from start to finish, so free yourself from any distractions.

I don’t open or crack my oven door to check on my bakes.  If the recipe calls for a bake between 15 to 20 minutes, for example, I usually set the timer for 17 minutes.  I check the bottom if I’m baking cookies, or I use a toothpick if I’m baking cakes.  If they’re underbaked, then return your baked goods to the oven for an extra 5 minutes.  Trust the process.

Post-Bake

This tip can be a post-bake tip or an as-you-go bake tip.  If you’re serious about becoming a baker, having a notebook with the recipe and the results is important.  Personally, I write down the recipe and the results of my baking experiment after everything is done (workstation is clean and free of equipment).  You can do this as you go, but I recommend focusing on your bake rather than worrying about documenting everything in real time.

I copy the recipe, and I write down my thoughts and the lessons I learned (mistakes I made).  If I want to bake the same thing twice, then I refer to my notebook.  I include this step in the first principle of mise en place because it falls under knowing your recipe.  I want to remember why it was a good or bad bake.

Let’s move on to the second-best part of baking: baking equipment and tools.

Essential Equipment and Tools

As a beginner, you do not need to have the latest and greatest equipment on the market.  I’m a sucker for baking equipment and tools, but I recommend starting off with the basics.

Here’s a list of what I think is essential to own as a baking novice:

• Electric mixer (standing or handheld): An electric mixer will change your life.
• Bowls: All different sizes.  These can be stainless steel, ceramic, or glass (purchase a set of 3-4).  I love the small stackable prep bowls for my teaspoon/tablespoon measurements.
• Food processor (size depends on available space in your kitchen):  This is another change-your-life machine.  It will be incredibly helpful in chopping up nuts and other ingredients.
• Oven thermometer: Ovens all heat differently, some 10°F lower or higher.  It’s good to know how accurately your oven heats.
• Timers:  I recommend having two timers just in case you’re putting multiple bakes in your oven (e.g., cookies, cakes).  I bought mine at the discount store.
• Digital scale: Professional bakers recommend weighing your dry ingredients instead of measuring by volume.
• Measuring cups (2 sets, if you cook)*
• Measuring spoons (2 sets, if you cook)*
• Spatula*
• Whisk
• Baking sheets
• Cooling rack (two)
• Oven safe gloves (two)
• Parchment paper

*I recommend keeping your baking and cooking tools separate, which means don’t use your cooking tools (e.g., spatulas, measuring spoons) for baking.  Cooking ingredients have stronger smells and certain foods can stain your tools, so it’s best to keep those odors and stains off your baking tools. Also, some dry ingredients can’t be weighed. Brown sugar, for example, will almost always have to be packed into a cup measurement (measured by volume).

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These are the tips and equipment that have helped me on my journey to becoming a good baker. I never knew of the concept of mise en place until I decided to take baking seriously. I think it’s an incredible tip for beginners, and it’s a concept to live by if you become a professional baker. An organized kitchen will make baking a lot easier.

Remember, you don’t have to spend a fortune on equipment and tools. There are plenty of places that sell good secondhand equipment, and you can easily find inexpensive baking tools at your local discount store.

I hope you found these tips helpful. In my next post, I’ll go through some popular techniques used in baking.