—CHAPTER ELEVEN—

Ingredients

The key to a baking masterpiece is in its inception: choosing the ingredients. A fine hand and a quick mind are key attributes of the home baker, but knowledge and creativity won’t make up for the wrong ingredients.

While baking success is a composed of several factors (a tested recipe, accurate measuring, good technique), it’s also true that the single ingredient most responsible for a recipe’s performance is the one most often taken for granted. Flour is the backbone of practically every baking recipe, and they can vary wildly from brand to brand, which is why using the best-quality flour you can is so important.

This chapter is devoted to giving you an objective review of most of the ingredients you’ll encounter as a baker. Knowing which types of flour, fat, sweetener, liquid, salt, leavener, and other ingredients work best in the recipe you’ve chosen is not just important, it’s imperative. Not all chocolate is created equal. Granulated sugar and powdered sugar are vastly different. Want to know more? Read on.

Flour

Wheat

The most fundamental ingredient for the baker is flour, since it’s the foundation for the vast majority of baking recipes. The single most important thing for the baker to understand about flour is that all flour is not created equal. Knowing how different flours behave in the kitchen will allow you to be both creative and successful with your baking, because you’ll be using the right tool for the right job.

In order to better understand flour, we need to gain insight into some basics and some history. When we think of flour we generally think of flour made from wheat. There’s a reason for that. While flour can be ground from a number of different grains, it is only the flour milled from wheat that has the unique characteristics and abilities we associate with the word flour.

Wheat flour contains two proteins called glutenin and gliadin. When a flour that contains these proteins is mixed with a liquid, a stretchy substance called gluten is produced. Like any protein, it’s pliable until cooked. After baking, it becomes firm and holds its shape. This combination of cohesion and elasticity allows a bread dough to capture and contain the carbon dioxide bubbles produced by yeast. As their numbers grow, the dough gets bigger. In short, gluten is the magic substance that allows a dough to rise, and it is found in the greatest abundance in wheat flour.

Other flours produce different amounts of gluten, giving them different baking behaviors. The amount of gluten is determined by the protein level of the flour. Protein levels for wheat from which flour is milled can vary from crop to crop, season to season. But there are even more significant variations in different types of wheat.

The Major Classifications of Modern Wheat

After eons of isolating and breeding more “user-friendly” characteristics, there are more than thirty thousand varieties of wheat today, each with its own merits. To bring some order to this, in the United States, wheat is grouped into six classes: hard red winter, hard red spring, hard white, soft red winter, soft white, and durum. These all have origins in seeds that were carried to the United States by people emigrating from Europe. As more wheat varieties are emerging from breeding facilities, those classifications will probably have some additions. It’s worth noting that breeding plants is an ancient technique, wholly distinct from the creation of genetically modified plants. There is no commercially available genetically modified wheat in the United States at present. To make wheat types easier to understand, we’ll look at current wheat varieties as some combination of the following: hard or soft, red or white, winter or spring.

Hard Wheats

Hard wheats are the high-protein wheats that contain more gluten-producing proteins than soft wheats and thus produce doughs with more structure and baked goods with a strong rise. Hard wheats, because they can produce more gluten, are therefore best for yeast-leavened goods. Physically, a hard wheat berry tends to be longer and more bullet-shaped than soft wheat berries, which are plumper. There are many more acres planted of hard wheats than soft wheats in this hemisphere.

Hard wheat berries can be either red or white, the color of the pigment in the bran. Most of the hard wheat in this country is red, but there is a growing percentage of white wheat being grown every year. Hard wheats, both red and white, can be either winter or spring varieties.

Winter wheat is grown from Texas north through Kansas, which is the largest wheat state, into mid-Nebraska. It is planted in the fall, grows until it’s about 5^″ tall, and then with the onset of winter and cold weather, it becomes dormant under a good snow cover (vernalization). It resumes growing the following spring and is harvested in late spring and early summer. Hard winter wheat ranges between 10% and 12% protein, the right amount for artisan and home bread baking, where dough is often made by hand.

Spring wheat is grown primarily in the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Montana into Canada, where the climate is more severe. It is planted in the spring and harvested in late summer and early fall. Spring wheat flours range between 12% and 14% protein, high enough levels that doughs made from them are better developed by machine. Spring wheats are also a good choice when you’re adding non-wheat (i.e., non-gluten-producing) ingredients to your dough.

Durum wheat is the hardest of the hard wheats, but it is in a category by itself. It is a more primitive wheat and, as such, its protein has very different characteristics. It doesn’t create the elastic gluten that is characteristic of more modern hard wheats. It is usually milled into semolina (a golden-colored granulated flour with the consistency of Cream of Wheat), which is used primarily for pasta. It can also be milled into a finer golden flour that can be used for the same purpose, or in conjunction with other types of wheat in breads, cakes, and so on.

Soft Wheats

Soft wheats are the plump ones; they have a larger percentage of carbohydrates, meaning less protein, and thus less gluten-forming ability. These are used for baked goods that don’t need a highly developed matrix of gluten strands, such as cakes, biscuits, and pastry. These are almost all winter wheats. They’re planted in the fall and winter in a state of dormancy to begin growing the following spring. Soft winter wheats are grown primarily east of the Mississippi, from Missouri and Illinois east to Virginia and the Carolinas in the South, and New York State in the North. There are also important crops of soft white wheat in the northern Pacific states.

Soft white flour has a greater absorption rate than soft red flour; that is, it has slightly more protein. Its protein is also more tolerant, meaning it retains its elastic characteristics during manipulation for a significantly longer period than does soft red. Soft whites are usually used for pastry flours. Soft reds are used for cake flour, which is sometimes bleached, chemically creating a “tougher” flour that can contain large amounts of fat and sugar but still produce a light cake.

Types of Wheat Flour

Type	Protein Level*	Uses	Wheat Source	Baking Characteristics
King Arthur Unbleached Cake Flour	10%	Cakes, some muffins	Soft red	This flour/wheat starch blend creates moist and tender cakes or muffins.
King Arthur Pastry Flour	8%	Cakes, pastry	Soft red or white	Lower protein yields a more tender product without artificial chemicals
King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour	11.7%	Cakes, breads, pies, cookies, quick breads, and muffins	Hard red	Best all-around flour: Enough protein for good structure, but not so much that baked goods are tough or chewy.
King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour	12.7%	Breads, pretzels, combined with whole grain or non-gluten flours	Hard red spring	Higher protein level gives more support to non-gluten flours such as rye; it also helps structure of whole grain breads. It makes excellent pizza crust and artisan loaves, which have a high water content.
King Arthur High-Gluten Flour	14.2%	Yeast products where a chewier texture is desired, such as bagels or pizza	Hard red spring	This flour has the highest protein level available; it’s mostly used commercially, for bagels and pizza doughs.
King Arthur Self-Rising Flour	8.5%	Biscuits, dumplings, quick breads, pancakes, cakes	Soft red	A low-protein flour that has baking powder and salt added to it already; it saves time and makes wonderfully light baked goods.
King Arthur Premium 100% Whole Wheat Flour	14% (not all is gluten-forming; see page 460)	Recipes designed for whole grains; traditional artisan breads, sourdough, as an alternative to white flour with some recipe adjustments	Hard red spring	Ground from the entire wheat berry, whole wheat flour contains bran, germ, and endosperm. The oils in the germ can go rancid, so whole wheat flour should be stored airtight, in the freezer.
King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour	12.5 % to 13% (not all is gluten-forming; see page 460)	Whole grain recipes where you want a lighter color and flavor; can be used to substitute for white flour, with some recipe adjustments	Hard white	Nutritionally identical to traditional whole wheat, the bran is lighter in color and has a milder, sweeter flavor.

*Percentages are based on King Arthur Baking Company product specifications.

From Wheat to Flour

Look at a wheat berry itself. In simplest terms, it is composed of the following:

• Bran, the outside coating that holds the wheat berry together and protects it.
• Germ, the embryo of a new wheat seedling were it to germinate.
• Endosperm (“that which is within the seed”), the remaining part of the wheat berry that is the food or nutritive source for the growing wheat seedling.

  While many espouse the use of whole grains for their nutritional value, there are some benefits to flours that don’t contain the germ or bran. The most obvious is that the gluten-producing proteins are in the endosperm, not the germ or the bran. A bread dough made from flour ground from just the endosperm—white flour—will enjoy the greatest expansion and create the lightest loaf since there is nothing to interfere with the development of the gluten. The bran, no matter how finely ground, has sharp edges that tend to shred the strands of gluten that have been developed in a dough. When the gluten matrix is torn, some of the carbon dioxide bubbles created by the yeast escape, resulting in a denser loaf.

  Second, the oil-rich germ, like any other vegetable oil, will eventually become rancid. Before the development of the refrigerator or freezer, storage of whole grains for any period of time was a real problem. Flour that doesn’t contain the germ, if kept cool and dry and free of infestation, will keep almost indefinitely, with no loss in performance or nutritional value. All of these considerations made white flour very desirable.

Milling

Once the wheat berries are cleaned and tempered (soaked to bring them to a uniform moisture level), they’re passed through the first set of steel rollers: the “first break.” These rollers are corrugated and designed to break the berry into its constituent parts so the chunks of endosperm can begin to be separated from the bran and germ. With each successive pass through increasingly smooth rollers, the small chunks of endosperm are ground into flour and passed through a series of sieves with different mesh sizes, resulting in several “streams” of flour. The first stream produces what’s known as “patent” flour, which contains the least amount of insoluble material. This can be equated with the earliest runs of maple sap that produce the fanciest syrup, the first cold-pressing of olives that produce extra virgin olive oil, or the first pressing of wine grapes that produces the highest quality wines.

Storing Flours and Grains

Flours that don’t contain the germ such as all-purpose bleached or unbleached, bread, white rye, and so forth, can be stored where it’s cool and dry for an indefinite period of time. Whole grains are a different story. Once you rupture the oily germ of the berry by grinding it into flour, it’s exposed to air and thus subject to oxidation. This simply means it will slowly become rancid. Freshly ground whole grains stored in cool and dry conditions will keep for about three months. If they’re stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator, this time period can be extended for another three months. Freezing is by far the best way to store whole grain flours, but it won’t stop oxidation entirely. When you’re dealing with whole grains, the best bet is to buy small amounts and bake with them right away for the most delicious results.

All grains are subject to insect infestation. If you’re going to have flour around at room temperature for any length of time, tuck in a bay leaf to discourage any “visitors.” If you’re going to be gone for any length of time, particularly over the summer, use all your flour or freeze it. Storage in an airtight container is advisable.

With each successive rolling and sifting, streams of increasing mineral content are removed. The next major stream to come off is known as “First Clear Flour.” This is significantly darker relative to patent flour. It is used often in making rye breads to add gluten-producing characteristics. “Second Clear Flour” follows “First,” and contains an even greater level of non-endosperm (i.e., bran) material. The last is the lowest flour grade of all, often referred to as Red Dog. Along with the bran and germ that has been removed from the other flour streams, it is sometimes used as animal feed. With the growing awareness of the benefits of whole grains, all of these streams are frequently reunited in their proper proportions to make whole grain flours. When all the streams of endosperm are blended together, except for the “Clears” and “Red Dog,” you have what is known as “straight” flour.

Additives

Once a flour has emerged from the milling process, a number of things can be added to it. During the 1940s, there was a temporary US Government mandate that white bread be “enriched,” as it was a primary source of vitamins and minerals in people’s diets, and the extraction of the wheat’s bran and germ had removed many of them. As a result, small amounts of iron, niacin, thiamin, and riboflavin were added to white flour. The dietary landscape has changed considerably since then, and King Arthur Baking Company no longer adds enrichments to its flours, in keeping with its philosophy of simple, pure ingredients whenever possible. White flour is no longer required to be enriched.

That said, all-purpose flour usually has malted flour added to enhance its performance for yeast baking (the enzymes in the malt help convert the starch in the flour to sugars the yeast likes to eat). In some instances, flour is treated with other additives to produce certain characteristics. History and tradition have created a desire for white flour. Because it was difficult for medieval millers to separate the germ and the bran from the flour they milled, the small amounts of white flour produced were saved for the lord of the manor. Thus began the association of white flour with the upper classes. Before food safety laws were instituted in the early twentieth century, unethical millers accomplished this “whitening” by adding a variety of things to their flour: ground lime, chalk, alum, bone. In 1757, the English Parliament passed a law banning the addition of alum or anything else to flour, although it was generally ignored.

Contemporary millers are still in the business of making white flour. The first step in accomplishing this is to separate the bran and germ through the milling process itself. The next step is to “whiten” the remaining flour. Given time and exposure to air, flour will slowly oxidize and whiten on its own. This rest period, which should be around two weeks in the summer and up to a month in the winter, also changes flour’s chemistry so that it will create a dough that is more responsive and elastic. However, rather than using time as an agent as King Arthur Baking Company does, many millers use chemicals to make this happen almost instantly. As the flour comes off the line at the mill, bleaching and oxidizing chemicals are added in order to quicken or actually replace this aging time.

Chlorine dioxide, benzoyl peroxide, and chlorine gas, all of which whiten and / or oxidize flour, are currently permissible additives. Benzoyl peroxide leaves benzoic acid, which, although it has an FDA GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) status, can be mildly toxic to the skin, eyes, and mucous membranes. This can be detected as a bitter aftertaste by people with an acute sense of taste. Benzoyl peroxide whitens flour but does not appreciably change its baking qualities. Chlorine gas reacts with the flour to change its absorbency, flavor, pH, and, in the case of some cake flours, its performance. After this reaction, the gas breaks down to leave hydrochloric acid, chloride (an electrolyte), and chlorite (which occurs naturally in unbleached flour). In baked goods where other ingredients do not mask it, it imparts a detectable flavor to people with sensitive palates.

The most controversial additive at present is potassium bromate, which is still in use both as an oxidizer and a conditioner in many commercially available flours. It has come under scrutiny, however, as tests with it have indicated that it is carcinogenic in animals and probably in humans. Since 1991, flour sold in California containing potassium bromate has had to carry a warning label. It is banned in Canada, Europe, and Japan. Although there are scientists who claim that there is no harmful residue left in bromated flour after baking, we are guessing that potassium bromate will ultimately also be retired as an additive.

King Arthur Baking Company Flours

In the late nineteenth century, when the effects of the roller milling process were really beginning to be felt, a lot of people wanted to get into the flour business. It looked like a burgeoning industry and a promising way to make money. Unfortunately, there were no federal standards or guidelines for milling flour. As a result, a lot of inconsistently milled and low-grade flour was produced, which was then “improved” with chemicals.

Messrs. Sands, Taylor, and Wood, the three who introduced the King Arthur brand of flour back in the 1890s (prior to that, the company had distributed but not milled its own flour), decided to take another approach. They developed a formula for a flour of the highest quality, something very specific and measurable. Since the protein level and its quality determine how a flour will behave in a recipe, a higher quality flour is one that is utterly consistent in its protein level; it will always perform in the same way. No other flour purveyor has more rigorous standards for the wheat from which its flour is milled, or a more consistently performing flour, than King Arthur.

This decision, to be purveyors of the finest flour possible, has stood us in good stead. King Arthur Baking Company has stood the test of time, the vagaries of the market, the decline in home baking, and the recent resurgence; it remains the finest flour available. Flour has been central to our business for more than two hundred years; it is the one ingredient on which we stake our reputation and around which the rest of our business is built. There’s a very good reason that recipe testers, culinary schools, baking authors, and anyone who cares about quality chooses King Arthur Flours above all others.

In order to take full advantage of the predictable performance of our fine flours, you will need to have an understanding of each of them.

King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour is a patent flour with a protein level of about 11.7 %, milled from hard red wheat. The protein level of our flour is clearly higher than that of other all-purpose flour, which can range from as low as 10.5% to anywhere above 11%.

This distinction has its roots in our heritage. King Arthur Flour was formulated in 1896 with New England bread bakers in mind. The protein level of 11.7% is as high as can be adequately kneaded by hand. Because it is an unbleached flour, its protein hasn’t been chemically toughened. It remains mellow enough that, when handled correctly, it will make wonderful quick breads, biscuits, cookies, and pastry. The protein in our King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour also has great “tolerance,” meaning the gluten can be manipulated for a long time before it begins to break down. As far as the bread baker is concerned, it’s a very forgiving flour. You can make a dough, deflate it several times or just ignore it all day, and it will still have enough strength to produce a wonderful loaf of bread. In fact, the bread will be better because the long fermentation will give it more complex and satisfying flavor. Our all-purpose flour is also an excellent flour for the bread machine.

Sir Galahad is the commercial bakery equivalent of our signature flour, King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour. It is used by commercial bakers who make artisan breads.

King Arthur Pastry Flour is an unbleached patent grade of soft white New York State wheat flour with a protein level of about 8%. It can be used as is to make tender cakes and pastry. It can be used in conjunction with our unbleached all-purpose flour to make French-type breads that have the characteristics of both flours. By combining the two in various proportions, you can create a protein that will produce the kind of texture you want in whatever you are baking. Our pastry flour is available through The Baker’s Catalogue (see Where to Find It, page 550).

King Arthur Unbleached Cake Flour, a blend of unbleached flour and wheat starch, was developed to give bakers a cake flour with trustworthy performance and ingredients, in keeping with the King Arthur Baking Company’s quest for purity and lack of additives. With a protein level of 10%, our cake flour blend works well in cake recipes where the weight of the sugar in the recipe is less than the weight of the flour, and the eggs are less than that of the fat. White cakes made with our flour blend won’t be as starkly white as those made with bleached flour, having a creamy ivory color instead. The texture of cakes made with this flour is moist and a little more close-grained than bleached flour recipes.

King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour is milled from hard red spring wheat and has a higher protein level than our all-purpose, about 12.7%. It is designed for yeast baking and its high protein is most adequately developed by mixer or machine; it’s also well suited for high hydration breads with long fermentation times, such as the popular no-knead style of breads. It works well in recipes that call for non-gluten-producing flours such as rye, barley, corn, oat, teff, and the like. It is available both institutionally and at retail.

Sir Lancelot High-Gluten Flour is our highest protein flour, 14.2%. It is used primarily to make ultra-chewy bagels, or to lighten rye breads and for some pizza doughs. It is most effectively developed by machine. It is available institutionally and through The Baker’s Catalogue.

King Arthur Premium 100% Whole Wheat Flour is ground from the whole grain of hard red spring wheat with a protein level of about 14%. The protein level here is misleading, as a percentage of it is located in the germ and the bran and doesn’t produce gluten. For practical baking purposes, calculate the amount of gluten-producing protein in whole grain flours, by using 75% of the amount given. This brings the level of gluten-producing protein to about 11.25%, an appropriate amount for yeast baking and kneading by hand. It should also be noted that the ground bran in the flour has sharp edges that can shear the gluten strands in the dough, inhibiting its rise. More liquid and longer fermentation times can ameliorate this and give better rising whole grain breads.

King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour was created in the early 1990s, when we were sent a sample of a new strain of whole wheat flour from a consortium of farmers in Kansas (now known as Farmer Direct Foods, Inc.) who had been working for some time with Kansas State University’s wheat-breeding program. After we had baked with it we knew that we had something really exciting.

Some people find that traditional whole wheat flour has a flavor that’s too strong for them. This new whole wheat flour seemed to be the answer to this. In baking with it, we found we could substitute it 100% for white flour in many breads with not a whisper of resistance from our loving children and spouses. What was the magic in it that made it taste so good? As we mentioned earlier, hard wheats in this country are almost always high-protein red wheats. This variety of wheat is also a hard, high-protein wheat; it’s only difference is the color of the bran, which is much lighter than that of red wheat. The lack of a pigment called phenolic acid is the reason. Phenolic acid has a tannic flavor, similar to that in tea, and is perceived as bitter by some people. Its absence means that white whole wheat flour is a little sweeter and milder in flavor than traditional whole wheat flour.

White wheat flour is still whole wheat flour. It contains the bran, the germ, and all the nutritional benefits of whole wheat flour, and needs to be stored the same way. We recommend substituting it for 25% of the white flour in your recipe, to get a feel for how it performs. If you like what you get, you can increase the percentage until you find what works best for you. Some recipes, such as brownies, gingerbread, and banana bread, are perfectly wonderful using 100% white whole wheat.

Other Wheat Products

We’ve focused primarily on wheat as a flour. Here are some other options.

Wheat Berries, any kind, can be used intact if they are soaked long enough (start with boiling water) to render them chewable. It is also possible to sprout them and add them to a bread dough, or you can even sprout them, dry them slowly, and grind them into flour to make your own diastatic malt (see page 467).

Cracked Wheat is the whole wheat berry cracked into pieces. It can be soaked just like wheat berries to add texture to bread. It can also be cooked into a delicious cereal to be eaten as such or added to bread. Cracked wheat won’t sprout.

Bulgur Wheat is cracked wheat that’s been steamed (partially cooked) and dried before it’s cracked. It can be added to bread doughs after a shorter soaking period. It also makes a very tasty substitute for rice.

Wheat Flakes are the wheat equivalent of oatmeal or oat flakes. They can be added straight to a bread dough for texture, or try substituting them for oats in a granola recipe.

Wheat Bran and Wheat Germ, available separately, can be added to whatever you’re baking to increase the attributes of each or both in a final baked product.

Vital Wheat Gluten (or gluten flour) is flour that has been wet to activate the gluten-producing proteins, washed to remove the starchy part of the flour, and then dried and milled back to a flour-like consistency. This is not the same as high-gluten flour (see Sir Lancelot, page 460). It can be added, about 1 tablespoon (9g) per loaf, to bread doughs that contain low-protein flours or meals (such as ryes, oats, or corn) or a lot of extras (such as cheese, onions, dried fruit, or nuts) to produce lighter loaves.

Rye

Rye flours are associated with northern Europe and Scandinavia, primarily because rye is the grain that grows most successfully in those climates. In fact it was the backbone of most bread made during the Middle Ages. Today, rye is produced around the world, but most of the world’s supplies are produced in northeastern Europe: Russia, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus. Much of the rye we use in the United States comes from Canada.

Like wheat berries, rye berries contain an endosperm (the food source for a sprouting rye seedling), the bran (the outer coat of the berry), and the germ (the embryo that would produce a rye seedling if the berry were planted). Rye contains more minerals than wheat (iron, phosphorus, and potassium), but almost no gluten-producing protein. To make a loaf of rye bread that isn’t as solid as a brick, you need to incorporate some wheat in your dough or understand a little of the chemistry of a rye dough.

Although rye contains about the same amount of protein as wheat does, it doesn’t behave the same way in a dough. For a loaf of bread made completely with rye flour, to attain some volume, you have to look elsewhere for help. A component in rye flour is the pentosan, a kind of sugar. The molecules of pentosan contain 5 carbon atoms (as opposed to the 6-carbon-atom sugars we are familiar with as sweeteners). These pentosans, located in the cell walls of the endosperm, can absorb a great deal of water and become glutinous or gummy, which helps create the structure in an all-rye bread.

But along with pentosans, rye flour contains an enzyme, amylase, that very happily turns endosperm (starch) molecules into sugars. In a dough made with wheat, these enzymes are rendered inactive before the dough, or protein structure, “sets.” In rye, however, the structure created by the pentosans continues to be attacked by those enzymes even after it has “set,” which can create an unfortunate end product. The water contained by the pentosans is released, the structure begins to fail, and you wind up with something pretty heavy and soggy.

But if you change the pH of the dough, lower it, and make it “sour,” you can slow down those enzymes and make them stop their destructive work. That way you wind up with the familiar flavor of the quintessential rye bread, slightly acidic, full of flavor (as well as being more digestible), and as full of volume as a rye bread can be. It also keeps exceptionally well.

Rye comes as “flour,” “meal,” or “chops.” Rye flour is ground just from the endosperm of the rye berry and, like white wheat flour, does not contain the bran or the germ. Rye flour comes in a wide array of colors.

Rye Flour ground from the center of the endosperm is “white rye.” Rye flour ground from a larger percentage of the endosperm, moving nearer the seed coat, is called “cream rye.” Rye flour ground from the outside of the endosperm, after the white and cream ryes have been removed, is “dark rye.” It is dark because it contains the greatest amount of ash, not because it is a whole grain flour. “Medium rye” is ground from the entire endosperm.

Rye Meal is a coarser flour ground from the entire rye berry and is equivalent to whole wheat flour. Rye meal is available in three grinds: fine, medium, or coarse. Coarse rye meal is commonly called “pumpernickel flour.” Pumpernickel is an affectionate German name given in fun, both to the meal and the hearty breads made with it, to describe their effect on the digestive system. (Pumpern is the German word for “intestinal wind” and nickel is a word for “demon” or “sprite.”)

Rye Chops are the equivalent of cracked wheat and can add the same crunch to bread.

Rye Flakes, berries that are steamed, then rolled, are like rolled oats; they add a slightly less intrusive texture. And the berries can be used whole in bread handled like wheat berries.

Corn

Most of the major classes of corn that we use today had been developed by Native Americans before the colonists arrived, with the exception of a hybrid that produced the dent corns that are the predominant and most productive corns we grow today. These we know more commonly as “field corn.” With this hybrid, the American Corn Belt (Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska) has become one of the most productive in the world, akin to the granary of the Kansas wheat fields.

Dent or field corn gets its name because of the dent that forms in the kernel as moisture evaporates from the endosperm. This is the type of corn developed by colonists that has become the powerhouse of the Corn Belt. Sixty percent is used for feed, but you’ll also find it in cornmeals, sugars, syrups, cornstarch, vegetable substitutes for lard and butter, whiskey, and myriad nonfeed items; dyes, paints, oilcloth, oil for soaps, cellulose in press boards, insulating materials, ethanol fuel, and sundry chemicals.

Cornmeal is the most common form of this grain that we use in baking. Most of the cornmeal you find on the grocer’s shelf is made in large mills and is degermed and hulled, which means it will keep pretty indefinitely. There are a number of gristmills around the United States that still mill the whole kernel, including the germ. As with whole wheat flour, the oils in the germ are subject to rancidity so need to be stored in an airtight container in the freezer. Needless to say, these whole kernel meals are much more interesting and have much more flavor and texture than the large production ones.

Cornmeal comes in fine, medium, and coarse grinds, as well as in several colors, yellow being the most common. White is grown in the South and blue in the Southwest. Nutritionally, the yellow comes out on top as it contains beta-carotene, which translates to an additional 630 IU of vitamin A per cup (156g).

Like any non-wheat grain, it contains no gluten so needs some wheat to hold it together in a bread or muffin or cake. The early New England colonists used cornmeal in making Indian pudding, cornmeal mush, Johnny cake, and anadama bread.

Corn Flour is a more finely ground version of cornmeal.

Cornstarch is a more refined part of the starchy endosperm of the corn kernel, milled until it’s essentially a powder. It is used primarily as a thickening agent, although a small amount can be added to wheat flour to temper its gluten-producing ability (essentially lowering its protein).

Grits or Polenta are both made from ground dried corn; grits are usually finer in texture and frequently ground from white corn. They’re cooked into a smooth porridge that’s a staple in the South. Polenta is coarser in texture, usually ground from yellow corn, and has a sturdier, thicker texture when cooked. It can be served as a side dish or topped with anything you’d put on pasta. It gives a golden, hearty texture to breads it appears in.

Hominy tastes distinctly different from corn. In order to eat dent corn, you need to either mill it (cornmeal) or remove the outer covering of the kernel. You just can’t cook it until it’s soft. To remove the kernels’ armor, you need to soak them in an alkaline solution. This makes the endosperm swell, which cracks the case and releases the inside. This is then consumed as hominy or hominy grits.

Corn contains a lot of niacin, but it isn’t nutritionally available in its untreated form. Soaking the kernels in water that’s soaked in wood ashes (which is how Native Americans did it) not only frees the kernel, but also frees the niacin so it can be absorbed.

Masa Harina is hominy that has been dried and ground, then used to make tortillas and tamales. It’s already nutritionally superior to regular cornmeal, but traditionally these flatbreads were eaten with some kind of beans, the beans containing amino acids that complete those in the cornmeal and thus create a whole protein.

Oats

Unlike wheat berries, oats are harvested with hulls or husks that constitute about 25% of their weight. Before milling, these hulls need to be removed, which is not an easy task. Once the hulls are off, the remaining berries are called groats and look very similar to wheat berries. Nutritionally, oats contain a higher percentage of fat than wheat, about 7% versus 2%. (This means that about 17% of calories from whole oats come from fat.) Oats contain more protein as well, although it is not gluten producing. Oat bran is rich in water-soluble fiber, which helps reduce LDL blood cholesterol. Oats also contain more iron, B-vitamins, calcium, and calories than wheat.

To make old-fashioned rolled oats—their most familiar form—the oat groats, with the hulls removed, are first steamed to make them pliable, and then passed through rollers that flatten them. To make quick-cooking oats, the groats are first cut, then steamed and rolled to produce flakes that are thinner and consequently more quickly cooked. There are also “instant” flakes that are even thinner than the quick-cooking variety. These are so thin, however, that they tend to lose their identity when they’re cooked and wind up pretty much as mush.

To make steel-cut or Irish oats (what the Scots call pinhead oats), whole oat groats are passed over steel drums perforated with holes large enough for the groats to fall into, but small enough so that they’re held there about half-exposed. As the drum turns, a stationary blade cuts the groats in half as they pass by. Steel-cut oats are available in most grocery stores. They make a wonderful, nutty cooked cereal as well as a great addition, both for flavor and texture, to breads.

Oat flour is produced as a by-product of the cutting and flaking operations and is being used more and more in cereals, as an addition to breads and other baked goods, and in baby foods, as it’s easy to digest. Except in breads, try substituting about 25% oat flour (either manufactured, or ground in your food processor from rolled oats) for the same amount of wheat flour, to create the typical nutty oat flavor. Because oats in any form are not gluten-producing, you’ll have to use them in conjunction with wheat in bread making, probably not more than 15% of the flour used. In other baking, the percentage can be higher.

Gluten-Free Baking and Flours

Gluten is a combination of proteins in flour that form the elastic network responsible for baked goods’ structure. The most common grains and flours that contain gluten include wheat, barley, and rye, as well as spelt, kamut, and other wheat relatives.

To replace gluten, a combination of gluten-free flours and a gelling agent, such as xanthan gum, are necessary to provide that structure in baked goods. These ingredients change the game considerably. Gluten-free baked goods can be wonderful, but they’re never going to be exactly like the wheat flour–based products they’re replacing.

The landscape for gluten-free baking has improved by leaps and bounds in the last decade, with excellent new gluten-free flour blends. King Arthur Baking Company spent years perfecting a range of products for gluten-free baking.

Measure for Measure: For cookies, quick breads, pancakes, cakes, and non-yeasted recipes, Measure for Measure seamlessly replaces the flour in your favorite recipes. A blend of rice flours, sorghum flour, tapioca and potato starches, and xanthan gum, it substantially eases the transition to gluten-free baking.

Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour: A blend of brown and white rice flours and potato starch, this blend is formulated for yeast baking. Best used in a recipe designed for gluten-free baking, which will likely also call for xanthan gum.

Xanthan Gum: Because gluten-free baked goods lack the proteins necessary for structure-building, they can sometimes become crumbly, or not rise very well. Xanthan gum, a thickener, emulsifier, and stabilizer, improves the texture, “body,” and rise of gluten-free baked goods.

Amaranth

Amaranth, also known as Inca wheat, is probably one of America’s oldest crops. It was used as a food crop by both the Incas and Aztecs and was as prevalent as corn before the arrival of the Spanish. Amaranth disappeared because of its use in sacrificial ceremonies and the belief by the Spanish Church that, by eliminating it, the ceremonies would disappear as well. But it managed to survive wild in the mountainous regions of western South America and is now experiencing somewhat of a comeback because of its versatility and nutrition.

Amaranth is not a true grain. It is related to pigweed, also known as lamb’s-quarters, which you often find as a volunteer in your garden. As a crop, it grows very quickly, is extremely hardy, and can survive where a lot of other “grass-crops’ grains” crops will not. It is also useful in that the whole plant can be consumed. The “grain” itself is actually not much bigger than a poppy seed, but it occurs in huge numbers. These seeds also contain more of the amino acid lysine, which boosts its usable protein significantly more than grass-crops grains. Like oats, it also contains much soluble fiber.

Amaranth can be cooked and eaten as a cereal; it can be popped like popcorn; it can be ground into flour. Because it contains no gluten, it needs to be mixed with wheat flours for yeast-bread baking in similar amounts (about 15%) as soy flour. You can use it in much greater amounts in making pancakes or flatbreads. Amaranth can be found in health food stores.

Barley

Barley, another wild grass, with a nutrition profile similar to other grasses, has a history that is as old as wheat. Remnants have been found in a swath between North Africa all the way to Afghanistan. In ancient times, and even in modern historic times in Europe, barley played a much greater role than it does today, even greater than that of wheat. It was easier to grow in many places and, as a choice of grain for malting (beer and ale were consumed much the way we consume water today), it was felt to be the best choice. But as people discovered the gluten-producing properties of wheat protein, and what it meant for bread made with it, barley began to lose favor. It did persist as the grain used most by the lower classes and as a feed for animals. And it has persisted as the best grain for malting. In fact, the word for “barley” is a derivative of an old English word for beer.

In its heyday, the length of a barley grain became the foundation of our linear measurement system. Three of them laid end to end equaled an Anglo-Saxon ynce (later inch). The weight of a barley “grain” eventually became the “gram,” the foundation of the metric system.

Although barley is available in several forms (pearled barley, scotch barley, barley grits), what the baker will most likely use is barley flour. This is roasted barley that has been ground into a nutty-flavored flour. Like wheat flour, it can be used for thickening. You can include it in any baked product by substituting it for wheat flour. Because it is not gluten producing, you probably don’t want to use more than a couple of tablespoons per cup of wheat flour. Barley flour adds its own flavor to whatever you bake.

Diastatic, NON-DIASTATIC—which malt do I need?

If you’re looking for a boost for your yeast dough, reach for diastatic malt with its active enzymes. If you’re looking to enhance flavor/sweetness/crust color, non-diastatic is the one you want.

Malt is used primarily to make beers and ales. In Scotland, malt is strongly identified with whisky (in Ireland, whiskey). Although other grains can be malted, long periods of experience and experimenting have led people to believe that barley produces the best result.

Malt making used to be a much more visible process. In the Middle Ages, women were responsible for this task. Later, you would find a malt house in almost every village. Now malting is done at an industrial level so most of us don’t even know what the process is or why it’s done. To understand why one would make malt, first we should understand what it is and what it does.

Diastatic Malt is grain that has been sprouted, slowly dried at relatively low temperatures, and then ground into a powder. When grain begins to sprout, there is a rise in the level of enzyme activity that begins to break down the starch in the endosperm into simple sugars that the new seedling can feed on. This is primarily maltose, thus the name “malt.” By allowing the grain to begin to sprout, then drying it at low temperatures, and finally grinding it, the enzymes are not destroyed. Once the enzymes are in some kind of wet medium, they become active again and continue to turn available starch to sugar. This sugar, intended for a new grain seedling, can also create a fine food for yeast, which in turn can be used for making either beer or bread. If you look on a bag of all-purpose flour, you’ll see that there is a tiny amount of malt added. Wheat flour has its own enzymes, but often not enough to create a flour that will make good bread. So the level of enzyme activity is corrected by adding a bit of diastatic barley malt.

Malt for baking is dried slowly and at a very low heat. Malt for beer is also dried slowly, but after the berries have reached about 10% moisture and the enzymes are stabilized, the heat is increased, and the berries are then allowed to develop some color. The lighter colors are for pale ales, the darker colors for stronger flavored porters or stouts. As the color gets darker (and the flavors more pronounced), the enzyme activity becomes more and more compromised.

Non-Diastatic Malt is a malt powder that has been dried at temperatures high enough so the enzymes are destroyed and no longer active. This powder can be used simply as a sweetener with its associated malt flavor; it can be added to the water used to boil bagels to enhance their color.

Malt Syrup is made from barley berries that have sprouted and are thus full of maltose, the sugar that gives malt its name. It can be either diastatic or non-diastatic. To make malt syrup, sprouted barley berries are soaked in water to allow the now-available sugars to dissolve. The water is strained off from the spent grain and then cooked down until it is a sweet syrup. Malt syrup is not quite as sweet as honey and not as strongly flavored as molasses. It has a characteristic malt flavor and can be used in baking like honey or molasses. If you want to replace sugar with it, you have to reduce the amount of liquid in your recipe by ¼ cup for every cup of malt syrup used.

Buckwheat

Buckwheat is not a grass like most of the other grains with which we bake (wheat, corn, rice, rye, oats). It’s actually related to rhubarb and burdock and grows as vigorously as the latter. It probably originated in China (although some claim Russia) and is a minor crop in the United States. Because it blooms continuously throughout the summer, it is a good bee crop and makes a unique honey. Its hulls make great mulch as well as pillow filling. Buckwheat flour is non-gluten-producing and has an assertive flavor all its own that is somewhat of an acquired taste. It is used most familiarly in Russian pancakes (blini), particularly right before Lent, when they are served with almost anything, caviar being traditional, but also salmon, sour cream, jam—whatever tempts the baker.

Chickpea Flour

Chickpeas, also known as garbanzos, are a legume like soybeans, that nitrogen-fixing group of plants that can enrich the soil. They grow well in warm climates and historically were found in Egypt and the Levant, those countries that border the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. From there they found their way around the Mediterranean to Spain and east to India, where they found a receptive home. Chickpeas have always been a poor man’s food. But just as we are discovering the nutritional value of a lot of “lesser” grains, so we have with chickpeas. Nutritionally, chickpeas have a higher fat content than other legumes, but they are rich in calcium and iron and are a good source of fiber.

In India, chickpeas are ground into a flour called besan, which is used for fillings for chapatis, dumplings, and noodles; as a thickener; and in batter for deep-fried foods. In southwestern France and in northwestern Italy, you’ll find a street food that is a very thin pizza, a chickpea pancake fried in olive oil on a griddle. In Nice, it’s called socca. Across the border, it’s called farinata.

Millet

A native of Africa and Asia, millet has the ability to deal with arid climates and nutritionally deficient soils, which is why it has long been seen as a poor man’s crop. But in addition to its ability to grow in harsh conditions, millet has other benefits. It’s nutritionally similar to wheat but has a greater number of amino acids (the components in protein) than wheat and most of the other grains found in this country. Most millet grown today in the United States is used for animal and bird feed, but we can benefit from millet, too. Think of it like rice or bulgur. Try adding some to your next loaf of bread; it will give it lovely gold flecks and some delightful crunch. Just as we’ve learned to share oats with horses, we need to learn to share millet with the birds.

Quinoa

Quinoa (“keen-wah”) is native to this hemisphere and was a staple of (and considered sacred by) the Incas. It self-seeds, and it too grows in extremes of temperature and altitude. Though technically not a grain, quinoa has more complete protein, iron, and vitamins B1 and B2 than the traditional grains that we consume, and can be a valuable addition to our culinary repertoires. When it’s cooked a small “tail” is visible as the grain expands and takes on water. It, too, can be used like millet, bulgur, rice, and so on. Whole quinoa as well as quinoa flour, available at health food stores, can be added like soy flour, at about 15%, to any baked goods to enhance their nutritional value.

Rice

Rice is another grass that has adapted itself to almost every geographical area and climate. But unlike wheat, which began its geographical journey from the Middle East, and corn, which did the same in the Western Hemisphere, rice is an Eastern grass. It is said that it reached Europe with Alexander the Great about 300 BCE so it has a much shorter history in the Western world. But like wheat and corn, it feeds an enormous percentage of the world’s population—more than half of it in fact—although it is still culturally Eastern.

Rice flour is not a large part of our baking heritage although it is often added to shortbread and other cookie recipes to make a sandier texture. It is a boon for people who have wheat (gluten) allergies as it can be combined with other ingredients for baking all manner of recipes.

Soy

Soybeans are unusual in that they’re a plant that contains complete proteins, as well as an impressive array of vitamins and minerals.

Because it adds moisture to baked products, soy flour can also be used as a cholesterol-free egg substitute. In some recipes, where egg isn’t used as a leavening agent, you can replace an egg with 1 tablespoon (9g) of soy flour and 1 tablespoon (14g) of water. Again, remember that you’re also substituting the flavor of soy for the flavor of egg.

Soy flour is ground from roasted soybeans and is available either as full-fat soy flour, which contains the natural oils that are found in the soybean, or defatted soy flour, which has the oils removed during processing. Soy flour increases moistness in baked products and gives them a longer shelf life. Full-fat soy flour, like any whole grain, will become rancid, so if this is the flour you wish to use, we suggest buying it in small quantities and either using it quickly or storing it in the freezer.

Soy flour works particularly well in quick breads, muffins, pancakes, waffles, brownies, and other bars. In yeast breads, you can replace up to 15% of the recipe’s wheat flour with soy flour.

Baking with Soy

Like baked products that contain honey, baked products containing soy flour tend to brown more quickly, so lower your oven temperature by 25°F or shorten the baking time. In fried foods, such as doughnuts, soy flour reduces the amount of fat that is absorbed by the dough.

Teff

Teff, a tiny milletlike grain, is grown in Ethiopia and Eritrea and has been that region’s primary cereal grain for thousands of years. Its name is an ancient Ethiopian, or Amharic, word meaning “lost” because it is, in fact, so easily lost in harvesting. Like amaranth, it has elevated levels of lysine making its protein more complete and more valuable for human consumption than that of other grass grains. It is also an excellent source of fiber and iron and has many times the amount of calcium and potassium found in other grains.

Teff is used to make injera, a fermented, foot-and-a-half-wide, sour-tasting pancake that is a mainstay in Ethiopia, both as a food and as an implement for eating. The fermenting process, which takes two or three days, gives the resulting pancake, which is cooked just on one side, a spongy surface with a lot of “eyes.” (You’ll recognize those from cooking wheat-based pancakes.) The pancake itself is used as a scoop and / or a container for their spicy stews and finally eaten itself soaked with the remaining juices.

Triticale

Triticale is a hybrid of wheat and rye, the first successful new grain crop created by combining species from two distinct genera. It was originally developed in Sweden in the late nineteenth century but didn’t appear as “triticale” in the United States until just before World War II. In the Americas, it is grown primarily in northern United States and in Canada.

Milk, Cream, Cheese, and Eggs

Milk is a given in much of baking, along with flour, sugar, butter, and eggs. Somehow we feel reasonably comfortable substituting one form of milk for another in what we bake, just as we do on our cereal. It seems a matter of taste, preference, and / or dietary concern. Once we’re beyond different types of fresh milk and into more esoteric forms, such as dry milk, evaporated milk, condensed milk, buttermilk, and sour milk, then questions begin to arise. There is also an interesting continuum between fresh and fermented dairy products. While we have found ways to extend the shelf life of milk by heating it enough to kill the organisms responsible for spoilage, other cultures have used those very organisms to create signature dairy products that would also be much less perishable than the original: the “cultures” of other cultures. These have identities quite beyond their original forms, and have taken on lives and culinary momentum of their own, independent of their food of origin. We know several of them as sour milk, sour cream, buttermilk, yogurt, crème fraîche, clotted cream, and most cheeses. Even European butter has been made from cream that has been allowed to develop character through the activity of its inherent bacteria.

Milk

Nutritionally, milk is an excellent source of complete protein, along with calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus, and a good dose of vitamins A, B1, B2, and riboflavin. In addition, it’s usually fortified with vitamin D. Fresh milk is available in a fairly wide range of options, from whole milk, containing 8 grams of fat per cup (227g), to skim milk, with almost none, to options with various levels of fat in between. When it’s combined with grains, you wind up with all the amino acids that create complete proteins. Just from a nutritional point of view, milk is a good alternative to water as the liquid to choose for baking.

But what, beyond nutrition, does milk contribute to baked goods?

Bread made with milk that contains at least some fat will have a lighter, softer texture than the same made with water. Milk also acts as a “conditioner,” making a dough easier to handle and shape. The fat in the milk slows down fermentation somewhat so it makes the proofing process more flexible; that is, it allows a bread dough to retain gas better and therefore elongates the period of peak proof. Better gas retention also means that the resulting loaf will have greater volume than one made with water. The presence of milk sugar (lactose) and albumin (a protein found in milk) changes the crust of the bread as it goes through the Maillard Reaction (see sidebar). From a sensory point of view, this means a more richly browned crust as well as flavors and aromas that are unique to milk breads.

As for the bread itself, milk deepens flavor and creates a more tender crumb and a finer grain, which makes it easier to slice. And, as long as the milk you’re using contains some fat, your bread will also stay fresher longer.

In quick breads, muffins, and cakes, milk can increase body and enhance the impact of other flavors.

In a pie crust, as in a bread crust, the Maillard Reaction (see sidebar) also plays a part in browning both the top and bottom crusts. Milk also makes the crust more tender and less apt to get soggy.

A Golden Brown Crust

The Maillard Reaction is the caramelization that produces the lovely golden brown color of a bread’s crust as it bakes. The long fermentation of the yeast in bread breaks down complex carbohydrates from the starches in flour to simple sugars. These simple sugars will caramelize at lower temperatures than sugar alone.

Lactose, unlike sucrose (table sugar), does not ferment; that is, yeast will not feed on it so it remains intact throughout mixing and baking. It is not a substitute for a sugar, which can be used to stimulate the growth of yeast, but it will contribute to the Maillard Reaction.

Scalding: Milk was originally scalded to eliminate harmful bacteria, which is now done through pasteurization. There are certain enzymes in unpasteurized milk that can interfere with the growth of yeast. Many older recipes call for scalding milk before starting a yeast dough, but, unless you’re using unpasteurized milk fresh from the cow, it’s not necessary.

To scald milk, bring it to just short of a boil in a heavy saucepan. Look for bubbles just beginning to appear around the edge of the milk with a skim of coagulated protein covering the surface. Don’t bring it to a full boil. Remove from the heat and cool.

Pasteurization: This is a process that heats milk to 145°F to 150°F for about half an hour, or to 161°F for 15 seconds. Depending on the length and temperature of the process, this changes the flavor of the original milk; the longer and hotter you cook it, the more the milk’s flavor changes. It does, however, disable certain bacteria and enzymes that can cause it to spoil.

Ultrapasteurization: This is an even more intense heat treatment for a much shorter time (280°F for 2 seconds) that kills virtually all natural bacteria and renders the milk refrigerator-safe for one to three months. The flavor changes in this milk are more pronounced than that of pasteurized milk. Although this process is more common with cream, ultrapasteurized milk is beginning to show up more frequently. Once milk is opened, pasteurized or ultrapasteurized, it’s best consumed within a week.

UHT Milk: This is a process used most frequently in Europe, but is increasingly being done on this side of the pond. UHT milk is heated to 282°F, held for several seconds, then cooled to 70 degrees in a pressurized system. Then it’s packaged aseptically; that is, sealed from any outside contamination in a container that doesn’t allow light through it. The benefit of treating milk this way is that it has a room-temperature shelf life of about nine months, which means it can be transported long distances without refrigeration. Once it has been opened it will spoil like any milk and must be refrigerated, which will give it one to two weeks.

Dry Milk is available in two versions, one that dissolves easily in water and a second that needs to be added to the dry ingredients in a recipe. The latter is processed with higher heat, which disables the protease enzymes that can interfere with the growth of yeast. The water-soluble type is most often available at grocery stores. The other is available in The Baker’s Catalogue (see Where to Find It, page 550).

Evaporated Milk, either whole or skim, is milk that has had about half the water removed from it. It was developed during the nineteenth century, before refrigerators, as a way to deal with milk’s propensity to “go off.” Before refrigeration or pasteurization, milk had to be consumed very quickly because, in its raw state, it is quickly perishable. The high-heat process used in evaporating milk gives it a different flavor than fresh milk, although not necessarily unpleasing. It also is slightly darker in color. Because it’s concentrated, the nutrients and the calories are concentrated as well. As a result, it adds richness to baked goods and can, in some instances, be substituted for cream. Evaporated whole milk has 340 calories and 20 grams of fat per cup (227g), while evaporated skim milk has just 200 calories and less than 1 gram of fat per cup. Which to use is up to you. It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. Both contain significantly less fat than cream.

Sweetened Condensed Milk is simply evaporated milk that has sugar added to it, about 50% of the total volume. This was done as a preservative since such a sugar-saturated environment is lethal to most bacteria. Like evaporated milk, its nutrients and calories are also concentrated. The addition of sugar makes it even richer.

When mixed with an acidic ingredient, sweetened condensed milk does something almost magical. Its consistency changes from something that can only be described as gloppy to a substance that has some structural integrity, a loose solid that doesn’t flow. This property, combined with the flavor juxtaposition of the sweet with the acidic, is found most famously in Key Lime Pie. You can also drizzle condensed milk over fruit as a topping. Unopened cans of condensed milk can be stored at room temperature for many months. You’ll find that milk in an older can may be darker in color, but will be still be fine to use.

Cream

Creams, like milk, are pasteurized, and it’s getting harder to find them not ultrapasteurized. The least processed cream, however, will taste better and will whip more easily.

American Creams go from “light” (20.6% fat), to “whipping” (31.3% fat), to “heavy” (about 37.6% fat). Then there is half-and-half (12% fat), and both dry and liquid nondairy creamers. Cream is usually used as a garnish, but there are some recipes for baked products that call for cream as the liquid with no added—or substantially reduced—butter or other fat. Because cream is halfway between milk and butter, it endows baked goods with the attributes of both: richness, tenderness, and wonderful flavor.

Hint for Whipping Cream

Whipped cream is simply cream with lots of air incorporated into it. At warm temperatures, the fat in the cream will more easily coalesce and turn to butter. To prevent this, keep the cream chilled, and if you think of it, chill the bowl and beaters as well. In hot weather, whip it over a bowl of ice. To avoid turning cream to butter, beat at high speed with an electric mixer until the cream begins to thicken, then lower the speed to medium and watch it carefully. Err on the side of leaving it too slack rather than almost butter. If you think you’ve gone a bit too far, beat in 2 or more tablespoons of milk or cream, which should rescue it. Finally, by using confectioners’ sugar as a sweetener, the cornstarch that it contains will act as a stabilizer and help the whipped cream hold its shape. Whipped cream that is to be used as a filling needs to be beaten more stiffly than that which is to be used as a garnish.

For a lower-calorie garnish, try this: Whip 1/3 cup (75g) heavy cream until stiff. Stir in 2/3 cup (150g) nonfat plain or vanilla yogurt. If you find this too tart, try it at ½ cup (113g) cream and ½ cup (113g) yogurt.

French Crème Chantilly (or, in English, chantilly cream) is essentially lightly whipped cream enhanced with some kind of flavor: vanilla or other extract, brandy, citrus zest, and so forth. This is used primarily as a garnish.

The British embrace cream more warmly than do we. A single cream (minimum 18% fat) is essentially like our light cream; from there, they move up to whipping cream (minimum 35% fat), which is closer to our heavy cream and where we stop in the cream department. They then go on to double cream (minimum 48% fat), and finally soar to clotted cream, which can come in between 55% and 60% fat. (Butter in either country is about 81% fat.) In both countries, there is ultrapasteurized cream that is extra-high-heat treated so its shelf life is longer. Because heat destroys the native bacteria and enzymes in the cream that will naturally ferment them, they can never develop the flavors that untreated creams can. This makes them safe but not nearly as interesting.

Fermented Milk Products

Fresh cow’s milk, which we Americans take so much for granted, does not exist in many cultures, and if it does, only ephemerally. Our commitment to fresh milk has caused us to take a different tack to preserve it as we described earlier; that of eliminating the naturally occurring bacteria found in raw milk by heating it in order to preserve its “freshness.”

Another probable reason for the significant presence of fresh milk in our groceries is the fact that a large part of our population can still digest it. Strangely enough, this ability, which is characteristic of almost all western Europeans, is absent in three-fourths of the people from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East. For reasons about which scientists are still speculating, these people stop producing lactase, the enzyme that allows them to digest lactose (milk sugar) before adulthood.

Many of these cultures, probably without really understanding the biological process they were implementing, allowed naturally occurring bacteria to ferment their native milks until they had undergone some inherent changes. This process of fermentation gave milk a texture and taste (as well as a natural shelf life) of its own. This is due to fermentation’s byproduct, lactic acid, a substance that precludes or greatly retards the growth of many pathogens that are potentially harmful to humans (e.g., typhoid and typhus, tuberculosis, etc.). The bacteria involved in fermentation also “predigest” the lactose, which make the resulting products easier to digest for people with lactose intolerance. Nutritionally, fermented milk does have benefits beyond those of the milk that it was made from. Modern science is slowly confirming many of these claims.

Because each geographic area has its own native bacteria that are adapted to its particular climate, fermented milk products, as with sourdough breads, have their own regionally influenced characteristics. Warmer climates—and the bacteria congenial to them—produce a firmer, more acidic ferment; cooler climates produce a milder, looser product. Another important factor playing a part in the final product is the type of milk being fermented. Where the cow isn’t part of a local agriculture, you’ll find people using milk from sheep, goats, horses, water buffalo, and so on. Each has its own identity.

The resulting fermented milks and milk products are used in multiple ways; they can be liquid, solid, savory, or sweet. In whatever form, these foods have centuries of tradition behind them, and they’ve become an integral part of their native cuisines. All of these have quite a long life in the refrigerator, significantly longer than fresh milk.

Following are the soured milk products and soft, fresh cheeses that are meant to be eaten quickly. Most cultures have a cottage cheese, or a local variety of the same. In the United States, we have cream cheese as well; in Italy, ricotta, mozzarella, and mascarpone; in France, fromage blanc; in Germany, quark. These are the cheeses that are primarily used in baking, although you will find some recipes that contain grated hard cheeses.

Sour milk used to happen naturally as a result of the indigenous bacteria present in the milk. Now you can sour milk easily by adding 1 tablespoon (14g) of lemon juice or vinegar to 1 cup (227g) of fresh milk and letting it sit for 5 minutes.

For Tender Texture, Increase Acidity

Yogurt, buttermilk, sour milk, and sour cream can be used interchangeably pretty successfully in baking. All four products will produce rich and tender baked goods because of their acidity. Just be aware that each will produce a slightly different flavor and texture.

Buttermilk, which used to be the byproduct of butter making, is made nowadays by treating low-fat or nonfat milk with special bacteria. It’s thinner than sour cream but thicker than sour milk. It’s usually quite low in fat, but its thickness and slight acidity make it taste much richer than it is.

Cottage Cheese is made from low-fat pasteurized milk that has been treated with a bacterial starter that increases its acidity and precipitates the milk proteins and fats from the whey. The resulting curds are drained to produce the loose solid we know as cottage cheese, available with a variety of fat contents, but none greater than that of whole milk. If the cheese is drained longer, the result is firmer and called pot cheese. Pressed of the remaining moisture, so it becomes drier and crumbly, it’s called farmer cheese. There is also a version of this that is aged and thus more flavorful.

Ricotta, an Italian cheese, was traditionally made from the whey separated from the curds of sheep’s milk (used in the production of pecorino cheese). Whey contains a protein that can be coagulated by heating it. These “curds” are collected, placed in shallow conical baskets (fiscelle), and left to drain for 12 to 14 hours. This is the low-fat version. There are now richer ricottas available that have been fortified with more milk and butterfat. Ricotta can be used very much the way cottage cheese is used, and it can also be smoothed in a blender to make a cream cheese substitute. In Italy, it is used in fillings for pastas, pizzas, and cannoli. And it can be the major ingredient in delicious cheesecakes.

American Cream Cheese is made from cream with at least 33% butterfat that’s inoculated with a live culture to separate the curds from the whey. Once the whey has been removed, the resulting cheese is 90% fat in terms of calories. In some brands, other ingredients are added to stabilize it and increase its shelf life. There is a “light” cream cheese version that has about half the amount of calories as standard cream cheese. Blends of cream cheese and Greek yogurt are becoming more popular. There is also a whipped version of cream cheese that can’t be substituted for the original because it contains a large percentage of air. Neufchatel cheese, which comes in the traditional cream cheese block, is made from a lighter cream with about 25% butterfat. Nonfat cream cheese is a final option and is a better choice to use as a topping on a baked good rather than in it.

Italian Mascarpone is made from a combination of cream and milk. It is treated with an acidic ingredient to separate the curds from the whey and, because there are no added stabilizers, tends to be softer than cream cheese. The two can be used fairly interchangeably, although you may want to add a few tablespoons of cream and / or sour cream to cream cheese to loosen it and make the texture a bit lighter. For a lower calorie version, you can use ricotta or cottage cheese whipped until smooth.

Yogurt Americans first experienced yogurt only in the later part of the last century. The first brands were often sweetened and promoted as health food. It is available as almost a liquid, or as thick as pudding, and can be substituted for sour cream in many recipes. When drained of its whey it becomes a spreadable yogurt cheese. You can use yogurt cheese in just about any way you’d use cream cheese. It’s a lower fat, tart substitute. Liquid yogurts can be substituted for sour milk or buttermilk.

Yogurt is easy to make at home. If you want a thick yogurt, use whole milk. Scald it in a nonreactive saucepan, then let it cool to room temperature. Remove about a half cup and stir in a couple of tablespoons of yogurt that contains active cultures. Stir this back into the main body of milk, cover, keep warm, and let sit for about six hours without stirring, then chill.

Greek Yogurt starts the same way conventional yogurt does, with milk and bacterial cultures; it’s strained an extra time to remove more whey, yielding a thicker product with a higher concentration of protein and stronger taste than conventional yogurt. Greek yogurt can be found in nonfat and full-fat versions. Full-fat Greek yogurt can stand in for sour cream in baked goods.

Crème Fraîche is a delicious French version of sour cream. It is a naturally cultured cream (containing active cultures) that becomes thick and develops a wonderful flavor, delicious on fresh fruit as it’s used in France. It is also called for in some cream pie recipes. Although these days, it’s usually available at the market, crème fraîche is easy to make at home. Pour 2 cups (454g) of heavy cream (not ultrapasteurized works best) in a jar and add 2 tablespoons (28g) of buttermilk. Cover loosely with foil or waxed paper and set aside at room temperature (60°F to 85°F) for 24 to 48 hours, until the mixture thickens a bit and becomes pleasantly tangy. Store in the refrigerator for up to one week.

Sour Cream was traditionally made by allowing the bacteria present in the cream to do their own work naturally. Because there is some risk in this (sometimes a bacteria will grow that is not pleasant tasting or is unsafe to eat), commercial sour cream is first pasteurized and then re-inoculated with a culture that will allow it to sour safely. Then it is often re-pasteurized to stop the process so there are no active cultures in many commercial sour creams. This makes it quite stable at refrigerator temperatures. Most of them also contain thickening agents such as guar gum and modified food starch. If you have access to a local dairy that makes sour cream, or an organic sour cream, you may find a version that has much better flavor. It can be used as you would crème fraîche.

What Is Whey?

Whey is milk minus the fat and milk solids. It contains almost all the calcium and potassium found in whole milk. Whey contains about 25% of the protein in whole milk and is fat-free. If you’ve ever made your own yogurt, you generated liquid whey as part of the process.

Liquid whey can be substituted for water or milk in baking on a 1-to-1 basis. Dried whey can be stored at room temperature for an unlimited time if it’s kept cool and dry.

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Liquids in Baking

Water, milk products, fruit juices, potato water, wine, and beer—each will contribute in a different way to the personality of a baked product. In yeast baking, liquids make the development of gluten possible. They also facilitate the gelatinization of starch, which contributes to bread’s structure as well as the crispness of the crust. Liquids act as a solvent, allowing the chemistry of leavening to take place. Liquids also help disperse ingredients throughout a batter or dough. Depending on the type, liquids may also act as a leavening agent in concert with other ingredients. Milk, because of its sugar content, can contribute to browning.

Baking with Eggs

Eggs are called for in many recipes for baked goods; they’re often essential for creating structure and stability, as well as for adding moisture and for thickening batters and sauces. Muffins, quick breads, and cakes made with only egg whites are usually tough, rubbery, chewy, and potentially dry. Egg whites form wonderfully stable foams, especially when whipped with a bit of acid and sugar. Whipped eggs are the primary leavening and structural component of foam cakes. Genoise and angel food are two familiar examples.

If want a very yellow, rich, tender cake, you can substitute 2 egg yolks for each whole egg called for, a practice that works particularly well with that cake at the other end of the spectrum, the pound cake.

Egg Size, Storage, and Handling

Our recipes call for large eggs, which weigh just over 56g apiece. Five eggs will yield just about 1 cup by volume measurement. If you use medium-size eggs, you’ll need almost 1½ eggs for each large egg called for. If you need half an egg, beat the egg then measure out about 2 tablespoons.

Use only clean, uncracked grade-A eggs. Store eggs in their original container in the refrigerator; it’s a good insulator and will prevent the porous-shelled eggs from picking up off-flavors. Don’t wash eggs, as eggs have a thin coating on the shell that helps protect them from drying out and bacteria from getting in.

Salmonella

The FDA discourages eating eggs that haven’t either been pasteurized or completely cooked; eggs aren't considered cooked unless they've been brought to 140°F and held at that temperature for 3 minutes, or brought to 160°F and held for 1 minute. This can be a problem when making meringues that include uncooked egg whites. If in doubt, check your warm meringue with a digital thermometer before you add it to your recipe.

Even though most experts will tell you that the incidence of getting salmonella directly from contaminated eggs is low and that cross-contamination or bad food handling can be equally a problem, eating raw eggs is still a hazard, especially for the very old, very young, or those with any auto-immune disease. If you buy your eggs from a small, independent farmer whose flock is healthy, the eggs are probably free from contamination; but there are no guarantees. We’ve successfully used powdered whites in the meringues and frostings used in the recipes in this book.

As with butter, eggs need to be at room temperature when you begin to put a recipe together. If you add cold eggs to butter that you’ve just beaten until light, the butter cells will turn solid and actually break, releasing all of the air that you’ve just beaten into them. If a recipe calls for separated eggs, separate the yolks and whites as soon as you take the eggs out of the refrigerator. If you try to separate a room-temperature egg, you’re likely to end up with egg yolk in the whites.

Eggs in a Dough or Batter

So let’s look at what each part of the egg contributes. The egg white is a stabilizer and, because you can incorporate so much air into it (it has the ability to increase in volume six to eight times), it opens and lightens the texture of whatever you’re baking. The air that’s beaten into them also is a primary leavener in sponge and angel food cakes. The yolk is an emulsifier and tenderizer. Taken altogether, an egg colors, binds, leavens, lightens, tenderizes, and, in recipes where the gluten in the flour is not developed (such as quick breads, cakes, muffins, or certain cookies), eggs become an integral part of the structure.

Some recipes call for adding beaten eggs to butter that has been creamed with sugar. As you dribble in the eggs, the batter may start to separate and curdle. Stop adding the eggs for a few moments and keep beating until the batter has re-emulsified. You can also reestablish the emulsion by adding a tablespoon or two of the flour from the recipe before adding more egg.

Eggs in Yeast Bread

In yeast breads, eggs also bring the same attributes as described above. But because they interfere somewhat with gluten development, the resulting texture of an egg bread is more cake-like. If you are looking for a chewy, artisan-style hearth bread, don’t include eggs.

Eggs in Pie Crust

Whole eggs add protein, water, and fat to pie crust dough, along with color and flavor. Adding a lightly beaten egg will enhance browning and texture. If you use just the yolk, you add mostly fat, which will enhance tenderness and color.

Eggs in Custard

Quiche, flan, crème anglaise, and caramel custard all use eggs as a primary ingredient and also as a binder or thickener. One large egg (or 2 yolks) will soft-set or gel 1 cup (227g) of milk or cream. Custards can either be baked in the oven or cooked on the stovetop. The difference between a custard that’s baked and one that’s cooked on the stovetop while being stirred is that the stovetop version will never coalesce further than the sauce stage; it can’t gel as solidly as a baked custard, because the protein molecules, while they are being agitated by a spoon, aren’t able to form as strong bonds as those baked in an oven.

To successfully make a custard on the stovetop, you need to cook it slowly over low heat. Once the proteins in an egg start to bind at a molecular level, the rate at which they bind increases geometrically with each degree the temperature rises. At high heat, the proteins are binding so quickly they’re difficult to control, and you’ll end up with a product that’s been overcooked and “weeping” fluid. So keep the water at a simmer; don’t let it boil.

To successfully bake a custard in a dish or cup, set it in a water bath with the water just at or below a simmer. The water will act as an insulator, keeping the temperature of the custard below 212°F as it cooks. If you’re baking a quiche or custard pie, skip the water bath; the crust is insulation enough. A custard is done when a knife inserted 2^″ from the edge comes out relatively clean. The center should be wobbly, as it will continue to cook as it cools. If you have an instant-read thermometer, make sure the internal temperature of the custard does not go above 165°F. This is the point at which those proteins will begin to bind too quickly and the custard will begin to curdle, separate, and become tough.

Curdling

When a custard becomes watery, it’s a signal that the eggs have been overcooked. Egg protein has the capacity to hold only a specific amount of water. As it cooks, the proteins bind tighter together and hold less water. Think of a sponge; it can hold a lot of water, but when it’s squeezed, the water is forced out. This is what happens when something curdles. The water that was bound between the protein molecules is forced out as the proteins pull more tightly together as they cook.

Egg Whites

Another incredible property of the egg is the white’s ability to retain air and create stable foam. This is what allows you to make meringue (or lighter cake batter). It’s important to beat egg whites to their full volume, but not beyond. Overwhipping causes the protein in the whites to bind too tightly together, squeezing out water to pool in the bottom, leaving a dry, sad foam on top. The easy way to eliminate this problem is to beat them in a copper bowl, or if that’s not available, to add something acidic to accomplish the same thing. The rule of thumb is 1/8 teaspoon of cream of tartar per egg white. A half teaspoon of lemon juice also works. The acid keeps the outer layer of the egg-white cells flexible. Without it, the cell walls can be become “brittle” and when you try to fold them into a batter, they will “shatter” and release all that air you beat into them.

When beating egg whites, make sure your bowl is clean and that there’s absolutely no yolk attached to the whites. Just the tiniest amount of fat in the yolk will prevent the whites from expanding fully. For this reason it’s best not to use a plastic bowl to whip egg whites; they often have traces of fat or oil on them. Egg whites at room temperature will beat up more quickly, so you save a bit of time.

The Problem of Weeping and Shrinking Meringue

The meringue on top of a pie crust may shrink and collect beads of moisture on its surface (“weep”) as the pie cools, or when it’s stored in the refrigerator. Sometimes, due to atmospheric conditions, this is inevitable; sometimes, however, it can be prevented. When spreading meringue on your pie prior to baking, make sure the meringue extends all the way onto the crust and all around the edge of the pie, i.e., make sure all the filling is well covered with meringue. This can help prevent the dreaded weeping and shrinking.

Leavens

The word leaven, as applied to baking, means to lighten dough (i.e., cause it to rise), either physically or chemically, or biologically. There are three types of leavening in baking. First, the unsung leavens: These are the leavening agents inherent in the ingredients themselves, and in how they maximize trapped air when they’re combined. Next are the biological leavens: yeast, both wild (sourdough), and domesticated. Finally, chemical leavens include baking powder, baking soda, and their chemical siblings.

The Unsung Leavens

The most basic leaven is simply the air that is captured in a dough or batter. This air is created and trapped by a number of different processes while dough is being mixed.

Beating and Creaming: Don’t minimize the importance of these steps; give them the time that’s required. Electric mixers have greatly simplified the task of beating sugar, butter, and eggs into a light and creamy emulsion for cake, or of making egg whites into meringue.

Flour: Fluff up your flour before sprinkling it into a measuring cup. Aerated flour will get whatever you’re baking off to a much lighter start. (One of the first things a King Arthur employee learns when taking our basic bread-baking class is to take a flour scoop and fluff up the first several inches of flour in its container.)

Fats: The way you incorporate fat into a dough or batter also increases the amount of air you add. Creaming butter and sugar together incorporates air, both through the action of the beaters and because jagged sugar crystals “grab” air as they come to the surface. Vegetable oil will produce a heavier product because it simply can’t capture and hold as much air as butter. Also, the water in butter, when heated in the oven, expands and turns to steam; this also helps create a lighter baked good.

Eggs: Recipes that depend on eggs for leavening call for beating them (usually combined with sugar) until they’re light and lemon-colored; that’s the signal that they’ve incorporated an appropriate amount of air. Egg whites can be beaten until they’ve ballooned with air and become a stable foam. And if you beat eggs together with fat (e.g., creaming eggs and butter), you produce an emulsion that can hold more air than either alone.

Sweeteners: Dry sugars will capture more air in a batter or dough than liquid sweeteners. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t use honey or molasses or maple syrup; when liquid sweeteners are used, the recipe calls for another type of leavening (usually baking soda in the case of these three liquids, since they’re acidic) to raise the batter sufficiently.

Biological Leavens

Wild Yeast is a ubiquitous part of nature; a small, one-celled plant, it lives on many growing things, including grapes (where it manifests itself as the powdery sheen on a ripe grape) and whole grains. See the Sourdough chapter for more complete information on wild yeast and how to use it in bread baking.

Domestic Yeast

Domestic yeast is wild yeast that’s been captured and “domesticated” by a yeast manufacturer. Each yeast manufacturer works with basically the same strain of yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, but how each cultivates the yeast to produce a final product is what differentiates the different yeasts produced by different companies.

Manufacturers identify certain characteristics that they decide are desirable, isolate them, and then replicate them. The resulting yeast is given a “training” diet to make it replicate, then the cells, now in high density, are filtered, dried, ground, measured into appropriate sizes, packaged, and sent off to the market.

There are several types of yeast available to home bakers today. Here’s how to make sense of the ones most of us have probably heard of.

Cake or Compressed Yeast: This was the original “domestic yeast”: moist, mushroom-colored, claylike in texture, and reasonably perishable. It’s what our mothers and grandmothers used, and what most commercial bakers use today. Cake yeast will keep, refrigerated, in an airtight container for about a week. If your recipe calls for cake or compressed yeast, you may substitute 7g (2¼ teaspoons) of dry yeast for every 28g of compressed yeast. Cake yeast is typically crumbled into the recipe’s liquid to dissolve it before being added to the other ingredients.

Active Dry Yeast: Yeast in this form was developed just before World War II to provide fresh bread for American troops: Fresh yeast wouldn’t survive long-distance shipping and remain viable. Active dry yeast is much more stable than cake yeast and will keep, in an airtight container, almost indefinitely in the freezer (above 0°F), or for several weeks refrigerated. It is most often found in packets in the dairy products section at your grocery store. One packet = 7g = 2¼ teaspoons. To substitute active dry yeast for cake yeast, use about 40% by weight. In older recipes, this yeast was “proofed” to dissolve and activate it before adding it to the recipe. Dramatic improvements in manufacturing technology have made this step unnecessary, but if it’s reassuring to you to see your yeast bubbly and expanding before proceeding, there’s no harm in doing so.

Instant Yeast: This is a different strain of live yeast, but it’s been dried at a much lower temperature, and uses a different process. It is typically added to a recipe with the dry ingredients and has a slightly quicker growth arc than active dry yeast (although active dry yeast will eventually catch up over the course of the dough’s fermentation).

Instant Yeast for high-sugar breads: This strain was developed to deal with sweet and more acidic doughs; SAF’s Gold yeast is an example. It’s more circumspect about its eating habits and will grow in these situations at a slower, more even rate.

Rapid Rise Yeast: This yeast is designed to work fast and die fast. It was created more as a marketing device for bakers in a hurry than to make good bread. We get a lot of questions from bewildered bakers as to why their bread had a tremendous first rise, only to peter out on the second. Usually it’s because they unknowingly reached for a rapid rise yeast. As bread develops its wonderful flavor over a long, slow period of fermentation, we don’t recommend short-circuiting the process by using this type of yeast.

Chemical Leavens

Most chemical leavens are fairly modern, having been developed in the past two hundred years. They were seen as a more “controllable” substitute for yeast, and it was originally thought that chemical leavens would completely replace yeast. Instead, they’ve created a baking category of their own, leaving yeast to continue the good work it’s been doing for so long.

Chemical leavens work by first being mixed into the batter, where it dissolves and begins its work. Triggered by moisture, heat, or both, the leaven begins to release carbon dioxide, which then dissolves in the batter’s liquid. Once dispersed in liquid, it begins to devolve into the bubbles of air captured in the batter. The carbon dioxide inside the air bubbles causes them to expand and, as they heat in the oven, they continue to expand until the batter around them bakes into a firm structure. That’s how chemically leavened baked goods rise.

Each of the following commonly used chemical leaveners has its own characteristics, some desirable, some not.

Baking Soda: Sodium bicarbonate, or sodium acid carbonate, is a natural alkaline ingredient derived from an ore called trona. The bulk of it is mined in the Green River Basin in Wyoming by Church and Dwight Co., makers of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda.

Finished products made with baking soda usually are associated with a slightly coarse or shaggy texture; often they will be slightly darker at the edges. Baking soda works by reacting with the naturally acidic ingredients in a dough or batter (e.g., buttermilk, sour cream, whey, citrus juice, and less obvious, brown sugar, chocolate, and molasses). It releases most of its gas immediately when combined with an acid and moisture, and a bit more when heated. Try to get a baking soda dough into the oven as quickly as you can, as it begins losing its leavening ability as soon as it’s mixed. If all the baking soda isn’t neutralized, meaning there’s not enough acid to balance it, the final baked product will have a slightly soapy taste and a brownish-yellow cast. To balance baking soda, use ½ teaspoon baking soda with the following: 1 cup yogurt, buttermilk, whey, sour milk, or citrus juice; or ¾ cup honey or brown sugar or ½ cup natural cocoa.

Double-Acting Baking Powder: Most baking powder on the market today is double-acting, meaning that its reaction occurs in two stages, using two different acids. One acid reacts very quickly and, when combined with a liquid, helps to aerate the batter. The second acid is slower acting, and begins to release carbon dioxide only when heated. This one-two kick is an advantage for several reasons. It gives the baker more timing flexibility; items such as baking powder biscuits may be made ahead, then refrigerated before being baked, and still have some chemical kick left by the time they go into the oven. Since double-acting baking powder includes a perfectly balanced amount of acid and soda, you don’t need to worry about a soapy aftertaste (as long as the baking powder is evenly distributed).

Cream of Tartar: Another natural ingredient, this fruit acid that accumulates on the inside of wine casks as the wine matures. It’s one of the ingredients that, along with baking soda, goes into baking powder. Cream of tartar is often used to stabilize meringue, as its acid helps strengthen the proteins in the egg white, allowing them to trap more air as they’re beaten.

Ammonium Carbonate or Ammonium Bicarbonate: We know this as baker's ammonia, which is an old-fashioned leavener not usually available in stores, although it can be found in some pharmacies, baking supply companies, or catalogues. The positive attribute of baker’s ammonia is that, unlike modern baking powders, it leaves absolutely no chemical residue in finished baked goods, in neither smell, taste, nor color. It has a fast reaction time and while the release of gases (as a result of the chemical itself, plus heat, plus liquid) produces a telltale ammonia smell, this odor disappears once baking is complete, producing wonderfully crisp cookies and crackers. Baker’s ammonia is used mainly in thin cookies and crackers, and sometimes in cream puffs and éclairs. It shouldn’t be used in cakes or thick and / or moist cookies, as the ammonia won’t have time to evaporate. Due to the unfamiliarity most bakers have with it, and its somewhat tricky nature, baker’s ammonia should be used only in recipes calling for it.

Substitutions

When a recipe calls for baking soda, you can always choose to use baking powder instead. However, since the baking powder possesses an inherent acid-base balance, any acidic ingredient in the dough won’t be neutralized, and will therefore have a more prominent flavor. If you like the slightly acidic flavor of buttermilk, and your recipe calls for baking soda to neutralize it, try using baking powder instead, which will allow the flavor of the buttermilk to be more assertive.

In general terms, up to 1 teaspoon of baking powder or ¼ teaspoon of baking soda is sufficient to leaven 1 cup (120g) of flour in any given recipe. If you want to use baking powder as a substitute for baking soda, you’ll need about four times the amount of baking powder as baking soda called for in the recipe: for example, ½ teaspoon baking soda = 2 teaspoons baking powder, plus an acidic ingredient in the recipe.

Substituting baking soda for baking powder is a bit trickier. You can make the substitution successfully only if there’s enough acid present to react with it; don’t substitute baking soda for baking powder in a recipe without some clearly acidic ingredients.

To make your own self-rising flour, add 1½ teaspoons baking powder and ¼ teaspoon salt to 1 cup (120g) of all-purpose flour. This equals 1 cup (120g) of self-rising flour.

Fats

Let’s start off on the right foot and think of fat as a baker’s ally.

Fat is understood to be that which “shortens” or tenderizes. The term “shortening” refers to any fat used in baking: butter, margarine, vegetable oil, lard, and shortening. Shortening takes its name from the fact that fat coats the protein molecules in flour, making it difficult for them to combine and create that stretchy material called gluten. Any gluten strands that do form are shortened (rather than lengthened, as is the goal with fat-free hearth breads). When you use fats with flour in a recipe, you have the tender, fine-grained texture of a cake, rather than the chewy, open texture of low-fat hearth breads.

There are other ingredients that can do some of this work that fall under the dairy category, ingredients such as milk, cream, and eggs. And in discussing fats, you have more options for those that you put “on” your baked goods as opposed to “in.” In other words, there are some types of fat substitutes that are fine as spreads, but can’t be substituted for “real” fats in baking without damage to your recipe.

Fat is nature’s clever way to store energy. Animals have it; so do plants. Most animal fats are solid at room temperature; most vegetable fats are liquid. Fat is a more compact storage unit than is a carbohydrate. A gram of fat provides more energy (9 calories per gram) than a gram of carbohydrates or protein (7 calories per gram).

Fats in Baking

Certain baked goods, such as most pie crusts and cookies, have to be made with a solid fat to attain their distinctive texture. Even solid fats vary in their melting points enough that you’ll see a difference in texture between cookies made with shortening and those made with butter; since butter has a lower melting point, it will produce a softer, flatter cookie than shortening. Lard will produce a different result in a pie crust than will butter.

So why use vegetable shortening instead of butter? Each has a slightly different melting point and taste, and each will yield a slightly different final product. The following information should help you decide which fat to use or how to substitute one for another.

The Solid Fats

Butter, a byproduct of milk, is 80% fat with the remainder water and milk solids. Butter can be salted or sweet (meaning without salt).

We call for unsalted butter in most of our recipes when the amount called for is over 4 tablespoons (any amount smaller won’t be affected by which type you use). The amount of salt added to salted butters isn’t regulated, making it impossible to know exactly how much is being added. Using unsalted butter and adding salt separately yields more consistent results. Like other dairy products, and unlike most other fats, butter contains a significant natural nutritional boost in the form of vitamin A. Although whipped butter is still butter, it’s had air beaten into it so it is expanded and can’t be used successfully in most recipes with volume measurements.

Butter is made up of several types of fats; slightly more than half is saturated, a bit more than a quarter is monounsaturated, and the remainder is polyunsaturated. It also contains some cholesterol, some calcium, potassium, and lots of vitamin A. The melting point of butter is just about at body temperature, which is why it has such a wonderful “mouth feel.” Because of the milk solids in it, it begins to burn at a lower temperature than vegetable oil.

Butter has another attribute that is key in baking—it tastes wonderful. When you do use it in baking, buy the best. All butter is not the same. Good butter is very firm, which means it will hold more air in creaming that will help to leaven cakes, and it will create a flakier result in a pastry.

Butter, with its lower melting point, is often used in conjunction with vegetable shortening in making pie crusts, providing wonderful flavor and enhancing browning of the crust. It is a more brittle fat than lard or shortening, harder when cold, and softer when warmed to room temperature. When working with butter in pie crusts, biscuits, laminated doughs, anything where butter must be rubbed into the flour, everything must be kept cool. If the butter is overworked and warm, too much will melt into the flour, changing the texture of whatever you’re baking. Since it is also about 80% fat, with the rest mostly water, you may need to use more butter and less water if substituting butter for lard or vegetable shortening.

Salted butter will keep almost six months if stored where it is dark and not subject to a lot of temperature fluctuation, say in the freezer, or a backup refrigerator. Unsalted butter has a shorter shelf life, about three months. It’s what our recipes are written for and the one we prefer; unsalted butter allows us to better identify and adjust the salt in our formulas. But either way, it’s best to buy what you need and use it up fairly quickly.

European-Style “Cultured” Butters are higher in butterfat, anywhere from 84% to 88%, and are traditionally made from cream that has been allowed to develop some flavor through the activity of its inherent bacteria before being churned into butter. Their flavors are more complex and intense. In baked goods where butter is a primary ingredient, such as shortbread or butter cookies, this butter not only adds its flavor but it also will make these baked goods more crisp.

Clarified Butter is butter that has had the water and milk solids removed so it is 100% fat. As a result, it has a much longer shelf life and a higher smoke point than regular butter. While it can be used to fry things without smoking, it is missing the flavor components that the milk solids provide. But it does have its uses. Clarified butter is wonderful for sautéing, in sauces such as hollandaise and béarnaise, and in baked goods where you don’t need to cream the butter (such as genoise).

Margarine has been around for well over a century. It was first developed in 1869 by a French food research chemist, responding to a directive by Napoleon to find a substitute for butter, presumably because it would be cheaper to make than the original. The original margarine contained a lot of animal fats combined with some vegetable oils. As we acquired the ability to hydrogenate liquid vegetable oils to make them solid, the percentage of vegetable fats increased as the animal fats decreased.

For many years, margarine was considered a healthy substitute for butter because of its lower percentage of saturated fats; then its reputation began to deteriorate because of the discovery of the negative health implications of transfatty acids, a byproduct of hydrogenation.

Most margarines are made almost entirely from vegetable oils, with added skim milk or whey solids (derived from milk) in some brands. And, like butter, they must be, as mandated by the USDA, at least 80% fat to mimic butter. They also must be fortified with vitamin A. “Diet” or “light” margarine is simply margarine that has had air and / or water whipped into it. Like whipped butter, it can’t be used successfully as a solid-fat substitute in baking. Vegan butters are basically dairy-free margarines.

Clarifying Butter

It’s easy to clarify butter. Remember that the result will be between 20% and 25% less than the original amount. First, melt a pound of unsalted butter in a saucepan. Keep it over medium heat until the milk solids on the bottom just begin to brown (this adds a delicious nutty flavor). Remove the butter from the heat, skim any remaining foam off the top, and chill. After it has become solid, loosen the butter from the pot by placing it on the heat just momentarily. Turn it out onto a shallow dish upside down. Scrape off the milk solids that will have settled to the bottom (now the top). The remaining butter is now clarified and, if stored properly covered, will keep for many months in the refrigerator.

Coconut Oil: One of the few plant-based fats that is solid at room temperature, coconut oil is composed mainly of saturated fat. In its “virgin” form, it smells and tastes of coconut. Many brands on supermarket shelves are refined (bleached and deodorized) and more neutral. It has a lower melting point than shortening.

Lard was the primary baking fat available to our ancestors. It is significantly lower in saturated fat and cholesterol than butter, made up of about 40% saturated, 50% monounsaturated, and 10% polyunsaturated fatty acids. The best lard is known as “leaf” lard, which comes from the fat around the kidneys of a pig. But most commercial lard is rendered (melted and clarified) from pork trimmings. Most grocery store lard is hydrogenated, so it’s best to read labels carefully. It tends to be milder in flavor and more homogeneous in texture. Both are 100% fat and are softer and oilier than other solid fats. Because of its large crystalline structure, it works exceptionally well in biscuits and pie crusts, but won’t create as fine a grain in cakes as butter, margarine, or vegetable shortening.

Lard is somewhat soft even when cold, so when making a pie dough, some of the fat coats the flour, inhibiting much of the gluten development. The remaining fat, which stays in larger flakes, melts at a slightly higher temperature than butter, keeping the layers of flour and water separate. This also allows what little water is in the dough to turn to steam and separate the layers further, which is what creates a pie crust’s flakiness.

Shortening is made from vegetable oils and is thus 100% fat. To make this fat solid at room temperature, these oils are partially hydrogenated, chemically treated to change some of their polyunsaturated fatty acids to saturated fatty acids. This also gives it baking qualities necessary for many recipes as well as to prolong its shelf life. Unfortunately, partially hydrogenating the vegetable oils transforms something that was nutritionally a “good” fat into one that’s not (what we now call trans fats). Vegetable shortening was reformulated in the mid-aughts to reduce trans fats to trace amounts (less than .5 grams per serving).

Unlike the vegetable oil it was made from, and as with butter, it can be creamed (i.e., because it’s a solid, it can be beaten until it’s malleable to capture air, which helps with leavening). As a result it can be used for such things as buttercream icings. Because it is all fat, this makes these icings more stable than those made with butter, which can begin to separate at warm temperatures. But you trade stability for flavor.

Shortening makes pie crusts that are almost as flaky as those made with lard. In a pie crust dough in which the pieces of fat are layered into the flour, shortening serves as a buffer between flour and any liquid that is added to hold it all together. As the crust bakes, the water turns to steam, forcing the flour-shortening layers apart and holding them apart until it melts, by which time the crust is set. This produces the classic tender, flaky pie crust.

High-sugar cookies tend to spread as they bake, but if you use shortening rather than butter, its higher melting point will help the cookies keep their structure long enough for the other ingredients to set, thus preventing spreading.

Fruit Purées can be used to replace a portion of fats in recipes, such as muffins and cookies, but they won’t produce a crisp cookie (the texture will be more cake-like). Because fat carries flavors in baking, a fruit purée just isn’t going to help here either.

Lecithin is a fatty substance naturally found in soybeans, egg yolks, and wheat. It’s a very good emulsifier, meaning it’s expert at bringing together disparate ingredients in a recipe. In its easy-to-use granular form, which we prefer, lecithin contains about 4 grams of fat per tablespoon.

In baking bread, lecithin may be used in place of fat in recipes calling for 1 to 2 tablespoons of fat per 3 to 4 cups of flour. The lecithin will help the bread stay soft and tender. In recipes calling for large amounts of fat, substituting 1 or 2 tablespoons of lecithin for an equal amount of fat is fine; you can’t, however, use a cup of lecithin in place of a cup of butter—the texture and taste of the final product will suffer.

The Liquid Fats

These are oils that come primarily from plants: seeds, nuts, and vegetables. They all contain the same amount of total fat per tablespoon, but they vary greatly in percentage of saturated fat, with coconut oil checking in at 92% saturated fat, while canola oil contains only 7.6% saturated fat. Choose an oil that has a high percentage of polyunsaturated and / or monounsaturated fats (olive oil is the highest in monounsaturated fat, but its flavor usually isn’t suitable for baking, except in the case of bread). They are used in baking where you don’t need to cream or beat air into a fat. They moisten, tenderize, and help retain freshness. Liquid fats won’t provide any structure in your cookie, cake, or pie, but it does a good job of “shortening” gluten strands, so it’s fine for enhancing the texture of sandwich breads, muffins, quick breads, and other baked goods that don’t depend on solid shortening for their structure. The type of oil best suited for most baking should have a light and unobtrusive flavor. Stronger flavored oils, such as extra virgin olive, peanut, or sesame, are best used for other purposes. It’s important to store them in an airtight container where it’s dark and cool to prevent rancidity.

Melting Points and Smoke Points

Knowing the points at which a fat becomes liquid and when it will begin to smoke as you heat it on the stove are of value in deciding which types of fat are best for any given purpose. Listed below are some of the fats you will most likely be using in baking and, where appropriate, their melting points and their smoke points. The melting points of most oils are not present as they are liquid at room temperature. And the smoke points of those fats you would not use for high-heat cooking are also not included. The presence of salt lowers the melting point of butter.

	SMOKE POINT	MELTING POINT
BUTTER	up to 350°F	98.6°F
CLARIFIED BUTTER	350ºF to 365°F
SHORTENING	325ºF to 375°F	115ºF to 119°F
COCOA BUTTER		96.8°F
CANOLA OIL	460°F
CORN OIL	450ºF to 460°F
OLIVE OIL	375ºF to 400°F
PEANUT OIL	440ºF to 450°F
SAFFLOWER OIL	510°F
VEGETABLE OIL BLENDS	428°F

Weighty Conclusions

There’s a lot of magic in fat. Animals have it. Plants have it. It’s the most efficient container of calories (that measure of those fuels that allow us to live) in nature’s emporium of nutrients. For human beings, at the dawn of civilization, fat in our bodies was a storage of fuel that helped us to seek yet more fuel, and it was a hedge against hard times. On our bodies, it kept us warm. But now in the age of easy access to fat calories, and overindulgence in the same, the magic has paled a bit—as does the value of anything when available in excess. But fat still has a critical place in our diets; we just need to know how to use it. And in most baked goods, it’s invaluable. The venerable baguette is perhaps the most obvious exception. But even then, we tend to anoint it with some kind of fat when we eat it.

In baked goods, solid fats can be persuaded to contain a lot of air to lighten a recipe; it can be a buffer to tenderize; it can be incorporated in small or large sheets to create flakiness; it moisturizes; and it crisps. All fats can transmit more heat than water and are thus an efficient cooking medium. Some fats add flavor components of their own. And some just provide the assist for other flavors. Unfortunately, the English word for “fat” is difficult. It doesn’t roll off the tongue easily; it stops dead and just sits there right in the middle of the mouth. Perhaps if we could use the French (grasse) or Italian (grasso), it would flow more easily and allow us to live with it more comfortably, as they seem to do.

Sweeteners

Sugar, in its many forms, is a critical component of most baked goods. It flavors both directly and indirectly, and it exacts its own chemistry on the other ingredients with which it’s partnering. There are many myths about various forms of sugar, including the argument that some forms of sugar are better for you than others; that, as with grains, less refining means more nutrition. But all sweeteners are equal as far as energy is concerned; they contain about 4 calories of energy per gram. Although there are arguments that some sweeteners are better for you because they contain trace minerals and vitamins, or come from organic sources, all of them, with insignificant exceptions, are essentially empty nutritionally aside from the energy they produce.

Our bodies break down all carbohydrates, the simple kind (sugars) and the complex kind (fruits, vegetables, and grains) into glucose molecules so we can metabolize them to create energy. Your body can’t tell whether the broken down glucose came from fruit, vegetable, bread, straight from the hive, a maple tree, or from a bowl of sugar.

Dry Sugars

Granulated white sugar is the most common sugar, the least expensive, the easiest to use, and imparts the least amount of flavor (other than sweetness). This is the sugar most commonly used in baking and on the table. It’s the one we use as a benchmark for measuring the sweetness and baking characteristics of other sugars. Because it’s the least assertive sweetener, it allows flavors of other ingredients to dominate. Some combinations:

Cinnamon Sugar: 1 cup (198g) of granulated sugar combined with 2 tablespoons of cinnamon.

Citrus Sugar: 1 cup (198g) of granulated sugar blended with 1 tablespoon of lemon or orange zest, or ¼ teaspoon of lemon or orange oil.

Vanilla Sugar: 1 cup (198g) of granulated sugar infused for several days with 1 or 2 chopped vanilla beans.

Superfine, Ultrafine, or Bar Sugar is the finest of the granulated sugars. It’s ideal for extra-fine-textured cakes and meringues and it dissolves easily, making it perfect for sweetening beverages. It’s known as castor sugar in England, for the silver shaker (castor) it is kept and served in.

Confectioners’ or Icing Sugar is a powdered white sugar with about 3% cornstarch added to prevent clumping. Because of its added cornstarch, don’t bake with it unless the recipe calls for it. In this country there are three grades of confectioners’ sugar, with only the finest (10X) available in supermarkets; the other coarser grades are used by institutional bakeries. Confectioners’ sugar is used in icings, confections, and whipped cream. Glazing sugar is finer than confectioners’ sugar, with maltodextrin added as an anticaking agent. It can be directly substituted for confectioners’ sugar.

Coarse and Sanding Sugars are white sugars in large crystals. They’re more stable than granulated sugar at baking temperatures, and thus can be used to decorate cookies or other pastries before baking. Since they don’t melt at the same temperature as granulated sugar, they shouldn’t be used as a substitute.

Brown Sugar is granulated sugar with some molasses mixed in to darken and deepen its flavor and texture. Light brown sugar has less added molasses (and less assertive flavor) than dark brown sugar; they can be used interchangeably, depending on personal preference. Dark brown sugar can be substituted for white granulated sugar measure for measure; it will alter the flavor just as you would expect and create a moister end product. If you’re out of brown sugar and want to substitute white sugar, add a bit of molasses to approximate the flavor, 1 tablespoon (21g) of molasses per cup (198g) for light brown sugar and 2 tablespoons (42g) for dark.

Brownulated sugar is granulated brown sugar and can be substituted for either white or traditional brown sugars, with the same kinds of differences as you would discern between white and brown sugars.

Rescuing Rock-Hard Sugar

If your brown sugar has gotten rock hard, place it in a plastic bag with a slice of apple. It will soften in a day. For a quick fix, heat the sugar in a 250˚F oven for a few minutes, or microwave on low for one to two minutes. Use it immediately before it seizes up. Better yet, store your brown sugar with a sugar softener or sugar bear (see Tools, page 549) to keep it moist all the time.

Turbinado Sugar is what most people imagine brown sugar is: granulated sugar that hasn’t yet been refined. Unrefined sugar still has molasses in it. While brown sugar has molasses added back in, turbinado never had it taken out; it’s a less-processed form of granulated sugar. Turbinado behaves the way brown sugar does, but at a higher price.

Demerara Sugar, an English version of turbinado sugar, has larger crystals; it’s often used in tea or on hot cereals, and can be used like coarse sugar to decorate pastries. The name denotes where this sugar originally came from, the Demerara district of British Guyana on the South American mainland.

Raw Sugar isn’t legally available in the United States because, like unpasteurized milk, it can contain bacteria and other foreign matter. “Sugar in the Raw” is a version of turbinado sugar.

Coconut or Palm Sugar is derived from the nectar of flower buds of the coconut palm; it has butterscotch and brown sugar notes in its flavor. Palm sugar comes from the trunk sap of sugar palm species, and is equally as sweet as sugar.

Date Sugar is made of ground dried dates, thus it has a significant amount of fiber. It doesn’t dissolve the way sugar does, is less sweet than sugar, and tastes like dates.

Maple Sugar is maple syrup cooked down and then beaten into a crystallized form. Maple sugar has flavor overtones that result from its unique mineral content and the fact that the maple flavor is developed as the sap boils and the sugar caramelizes. This is not a good substitute for any other sugar; it is best appreciated in recipes designed for it.

Malt is a powder made from barley that has been sprouted and dried. Not long ago there was interest in sprouting grains to add an inexpensive nutritional wallop to one’s diet. Malting takes this one step further. There are two types of dry malt: diastatic and non-diastatic.

As barley (or any grain berry) gets closer and closer to sprouting, it develops diastatic enzymes that will break down its starch into the simple sugars, maltose and dextrin, that become the food source for an emerging seedling. This is the food it uses while it develops its own independent feeding system. We can capture those enzymes by allowing barley or other grain berries to sprout. When their activity is at its greatest, the berries are dried at a relatively low temperature (not over 170°F) that doesn’t damage the enzymes. They are then ground into a slightly sweet flour.

If you read the ingredient statement on most bags of all-purpose flour in this country, you’ll find that a small amount of malted barley flour has been added as a natural yeast food. It has also long been used as a yeast food in Europe. When a tiny amount of malted barley flour is added to wheat flour in a dough, it breaks the wheat starch into sugars for yeast to feed on, and gives the dough a real boost.

Non-diastatic malt is made the same way, but dried at higher temperatures that destroy the ability of the enzymes to act on the starch.

Malt is an unsung health food that has been around for years. Diastatic malt, used in small amounts, enhances the appearance, flavor, and texture of bread; non-diastatic malt, in larger amounts, adds a familiar malt flavor, but is only one-third as sweet as granulated sugar.

Liquid Sugars

There are several liquid sweeteners (syrups) that are made from sources that define their flavor, color, and some baking characteristics. Some pure syrups include molasses (sugarcane), honey (bees), maple syrup (the sugar maple tree), and sorghum (sweet sorghum grass). There are others that are blends, in some cases with other flavors added. The base for several of these is corn syrup (or high-fructose corn syrup) because it has little flavor of its own and combines well with stronger flavored syrups. Dark corn syrup is an example of this. The most commonly used syrups are listed first.

Corn Syrup is a sweetener that’s become increasingly important, as corn is a relatively inexpensive and easy crop to grow. Corn syrup, the kind available in the grocery for the home baker, is about 25% water. The remainder is glucose, salt, and vanilla. Glucose is hygroscopic, or moisture retaining; baked goods made with corn syrup will stay moist longer.

Dark Corn Syrup is a mixture of dark corn syrup, refiner’s (cane) syrup, caramel flavor, salt, caramel color, and a preservative. Its flavor is stronger than light corn syrup; it can stand in for molasses in a pinch.

Honey is probably our oldest sweetener. It’s unique as a sweetener because it only needs to be removed from the hive. Once out and strained of bits of comb, it’s ready to eat. It was used extensively by the Greeks and Romans and was the primary sweetener in Europe until the sixteenth century, when cane sugar became more easily available.

It’s perceived as sweeter than sugar and it has different browning characteristics so you need to bake with it at a lower temperature. Honey is more hygroscopic than table sugar and will help keep baked goods moist. It also has a unique flavor that’s an important part of many traditional baked goods, such as lebkuchen and baklava.

Maple Syrup is another sweetener that, in its natural state, is as pure a source for sugar as is honey (unlike cane syrup, which has a lot of undesirable stuff in it that needs to be removed).

There are very few areas in the world where the sugar maple grows well and, fortunately for us, one of them is the northeastern United States (and Canada). Native Americans were making syrup long before Europeans came on the scene, but with Europeans came equipment and technology that has made the process somewhat easier.

Maple sugar and syrup were the sweeteners of choice for early colonial cooks. Before the Revolution, sugar from the West Indies was heavily taxed so it was too expensive for general use. Later on as our distaste for slavery grew, our distaste for sugar produced by slave labor grew as well. So maple sugar managed to sustain our needs for sweetening for quite some time. By the end of the nineteenth century, sugar from sugar beets began to be available and that, plus the fact that cane sugar had become much less expensive, meant that the maple was no longer used as a major sugar source. Maple syrup is still produced by hardy Northeasterners who can’t yet get into their fields to plant and who somehow can’t let the sugar season go by without a “go at it.”

Maple sap tastes like water with a faint echo of sweetness. The sugar season begins in early spring when nights are still below freezing but days soar to heady temperatures of 45° to 50°F, preferably with no wind and lots of sun. Then the trees are tapped to release the sap (a slow, drip, drip, drip kind of process). After the sap is collected, it is poured into an evaporator placed over a wood- or oil-fired “arch.”

To make a gallon of syrup, you need to boil down 35 to 50 gallons of sap. Early season sap is lighter flavored than later season sap, when bacterial activity begins to work on the sucrose and break it down into a larger glucose / fructose component. Thus early season sap makes lighter syrup, while darker syrup comes from the later sap. The labeling and grading system for maple syrup was changed in 2015, with all US maple syrups being labeled Grade A, then given a set of descriptions for the various iterations. The terms range from “amber color” (formerly Grade A) to “dark color and robust flavor” (formerly Grade B) to “very dark and strong” (formerly Grade C). Some people prefer dark syrup for its assertiveness in baking. Others love the ethereal taste of the first-run syrup as a condiment, on pancakes, waffles, and hot cereal.

Molasses is what’s left after the juice of the sugarcane has been boiled and concentrated and all the available sucrose has crystallized. Because molasses making is done in three stages, there are three resulting grades. “First” molasses is lighter in color and flavor than “second” and “third” (blackstrap) molasses. With each boiling and extraction, the remaining liquid becomes more and more caramelized (darker), the minerals and other “impurities” become more and more concentrated, and the sugar content lowers. Blackstrap molasses contains only about 50% sugar components, with the result that its flavor is too strong to use in any but small amounts. In baking, use it in combination with other, lighter flavored sweeteners. “First” molasses produces the most pleasing flavor. It has a signature flavor that combines well with ginger and other spices in cookies and cakes, particularly gingerbread.

Molasses and maple syrup usually are interchangeable in a recipe, especially if small amounts are called for. Most other liquid sugars can be substituted for each other too, except barley malt syrup, corn syrup, and rice syrup. These are much less sweet than their counterparts. Be aware that some have a higher water content than others and they all behave slightly differently. Experiment with them, but not when you’ve got special guests arriving.

Golden Syrup is an English sweetener (the Australians and New Zealanders have their versions, too). An ultrathick, smooth syrup that tastes like a caramelized version of our corn syrup, golden syrup has much more flavor and is much more interesting. It’s often drizzled onto scones or hot cereal, or into tea.

Malt Syrup (barley malt syrup) is made from malted barley that is ground and then briefly treated with an acid to dissolve the enzymes, sugars, and vitamins. It is then heated with water to form the mildly sweet, concentrated liquid we know as malt syrup. Although dark-colored like molasses, its flavor is much milder. To create a moist and chewy bagel with a shiny shell, commercial bagel bakers add a small amount of malted barley syrup in place of ordinary sweetener.

Sorghum is a classic Southern and Midwestern American sweetener extracted from an Old World grass. Its slightly molasses flavor complements a range of muffins, pancakes, cereals, and quick breads.

Agave syrup is extracted from the core of the agave cactus. It’s slightly thinner and contains more water than honey. Its sweetness comes mostly from fructose (50% to 60%) and some glucose (20%). It’s about 1.5 times sweeter than sugar.

Substitutions

We don’t recommend substituting liquid sweeteners for granulated or brown sugars in recipes in which the fat is creamed with the sweetener. Liquid sweeteners can’t induce fats to contain air because they don’t have a crystalline structure. The result will be a dense, heavy product.

One potential substitution, honey for table sugar, can be done with some adjustments. It is sweeter than table sugar, so for 1 cup (198g) of sugar, use a generous ¾ cup (252g) of honey and decrease the liquid in the recipe by 3 to 4 tablespoons (42 to 56g). If the recipe contains no additional liquid, increase the flour by 3 tablespoons (23g). Don’t use honey in recipes that need to be cooked at over 350˚F because it scorches.

If a recipe calls for 1 cup (333g) of honey and you’re out, you can substitute 1¼ cups (248g) of granulated sugar or brown sugar plus ¼ cup (57g) of water.

How Sugars Affect What We Bake

Certain breads are definitely superior with no added sweetener, but can you imagine a cake, cookie, quick bread, or pie without any sweetening? Sugar’s most important attribute is easy to understand. It’s sweet and we just like it.

But sugar’s chemistry in baking is a more important consideration. Because it’s hygroscopic (it attracts and absorbs water), it competes with the protein (gluten) in flour for liquids in a batter. By not allowing the flour to have all the liquid, it slows down the development of the gluten, which means that your cakes, quick breads, and cookies will be tender. And by slowing down the rate at which the flour can absorb the liquid in a batter, it allows a cake or quick bread to expand (rise) for a longer time. The same cake made without sugar not only will taste pretty bad, but will be tough as well as flat. This is why, when you make quick breads or biscuits that contain small amounts of sugar (or none at all), it’s really important to do minimal mixing (20 seconds) because there’s no sugar there to interfere with the development of the gluten. When you cream granulated sugar (remember it is in crystals so it has a lot of edges and sides) with butter in making a cake, air gets trapped on its surface to make this combination light and fluffy. When the rest of the ingredients are mixed in and the resulting batter is baked, the air bubbles expand and make the cake rise.

In angel food cakes, sugar, along with cream of tartar, helps stiffen and stabilize the egg white (protein), which means it can trap air and carbon dioxide bubbles. This makes these cakes bake up almost lighter than air. Another way in which sugar makes these cakes light is by interfering with the egg white protein’s ability to coagulate and set. Because they take longer to cook, the egg foam can continue to expand for longer, giving the cake more height. It also makes the cake tender.

At 350ºF to 375°F, granulated sugar caramelizes or, really, begins to burn slightly. It becomes golden in color and develops a flavor that most of us find very pleasing. This helps the surface of cakes and cookies to brown and become a bit crisp. The bonds that caramelized sugar form on the surface keep moisture inside your baked good. The higher the sugar content, the more browning will occur.

This caramelizing on the surface of cookies creates a “cracked” surface, golden brown color, and great flavor. Sugar is at work on the inside of the cookie, too; after a cookie dough is mixed, about half the sugar is still undissolved. As the cookie bakes, the sugar finally dissolves and allows the cookie to spread. The less sugar, the less spread.

All sugars are hygroscopic. But it’s good to remember some are more hygroscopic than others; when you bake with honey, corn syrup, or another liquid sweetener, you’ll have a moister end product. Cookies made with granulated sugar will be hard and crisp when they cool. Cookies made with corn syrup or honey will brown more easily and will become soft when they cool.

In a pie crust dough, sugar also will interfere with gluten formation, making a more tender crust. Pie crusts with a lot of sugar will have a sandy texture and not enough gluten development to be easily rolled out. There are some recipes where this is a good thing and some where it’s not. For more information, see the Pies and Tarts chapter.

Even when no sugar is added to a bread recipe, sugar is at work. When a bread dough is rising, yeast is growing by converting the wheat starch into sugars. These sugars create that lovely golden surface on a well-baked loaf of bread.

Each sweetener has its own signature flavor that can create or change the personality of whatever you’re baking. We don’t recommend substituting one for another, as substituting sweeteners often changes the chemical balance in a recipe enough that it won’t work right. Use your common sense; it’s OK to substitute golden syrup for corn syrup, or light brown sugar for dark brown, but don’t stray too far from the recipe’s original sweetener or you may find yourself in trouble.

Sugar Substitutes

Refined sugar is 99% sucrose and a simple carbohydrate. Many additional types of sugars have “natural” sources. You’ll recognize some of them on product labels because their chemical names also end in “-ose.” Included are glucose (also called dextrose), fructose (also called levulose), lactose, and maltose. Additionally there are sugar alcohols, which are actually neither sugar nor alcohol. They are mostly found in candies and processed foods. You can identify them because most of them end in “-ol”: maltitol, sorbitol, xylitol, and mannitol.

Granulated Fructose is a sucrose look-alike and can be found often with traditional sugars in the grocery store. It has the same caloric value as regular sugar, but is perceived as sweeter; therefore you can use about one-third less of it and thus decrease your intake of calories. But beware, it doesn’t behave exactly like granulated sugar in baking. Because fructose is more hygroscopic than sucrose, fructose-sweetened products tend to be moister and darker than if they were made with white sugar.

Fruit Juice Concentrates (apple, orange, or white grape) also can be substituted for sugar. To use them in baking, use ¾ cup (169g) for every cup (198g) of white sugar and decrease the amount of liquid by 3 tablespoons (42g). Start by substituting for only half the sugar called for in a recipe.

Artificial Sweeteners

Artificial sweeteners provide sweetness but not the other characteristics one expects from sugar, such as bulk and flavor. If you are going to use these, we recommend using them as a substitute for only some of the sugar in a recipe.

Aspartame was discovered in 1965 and is 160 to 220 times sweeter than sucrose. The FDA approved aspartame in 1981, making it the first low-calorie sweetener approved by the FDA in more than 25 years (since Saccharin). It is sold under trade names such as NutraSweet and Equal.

Aspartame sweeteners are heat-sensitive. They are not appropriate for recipes that are cooked more than 20 minutes because the chemical compounds break down and lose their sweetening power. Thus they aren’t recommended for use in sweet yeast breads, quick breads, or cakes. You might want to experiment with short-bake cookies. It is best added to noncooked items such as fillings for no-bake pies or to puddings after they have been removed from the heat and are partially cooled. It is also marketed as “Equal for Recipes” and “Equal Spoonfuls,” but while the packaging states that they can be used in “practically any recipe where sugar functions primarily as a sweetener,” the label goes on to say, “In recipes where sugar also provides structure and volume [and other baking characteristics], some modifications may be required for best results.” It takes 7¼ teaspoons of Equal to equal 1 cup (198g) of granulated sugar.

People with a rare condition called phenylketonuria (PKU) should avoid aspartame.

Acesulfame Potassium or “Acesulfame K” was discovered in 1967 and was brought to market in 1988. It is about 200 times sweeter than table sugar and sold under the brand names Sunett and Sweet One. It is heat stable so it can be used in baking and cooking, and it’s suggested that you use acesulfame K in combination with granulated sugar when baking. Substitute 6 (1g) packets for each ¼ cup (50g) of sugar.

Saccharin, up to 700 times sweeter than sugar, is named after the Latin word for sugar (saccharum) and has the longest history of all the sugar substitutes. It was discovered in 1879 and was used during both World Wars to compensate for sugar shortages and rationing. Saccharin is sold under the trade names of Sweet’N Low, Sucaryl, Sugar Twin, Sweet Magic, and Zero-Cal. It has a long shelf life and is stable at high temperatures, so it is appropriate for use in baked goods. But as is stated on the Sweet’N Low container, “Many recipes require some sugar for proper volume, texture, and browning. We suggest replacing half the sugar your recipe calls for with an equivalent amount of Sweet’N Low.” Some people with sensitive palates can detect an aftertaste. Because saccharin can pass from a mother to an unborn child, pregnant women may want to check with their obstetricians about the use of saccharin.

Sucralose is the only noncaloric sweetener actually made from sucrose (table sugar) and was approved for public use by the FDA in 1998. To create it, three atoms of chlorine are substituted for three hydroxyl groups on the sugar molecule, a change that produces a sweetener that has no effective calories. It is 600 times sweeter than the sugar from which it was created, yet still tastes like it. Unlike aspartame-based sweeteners, it does not deteriorate at high temperatures so it can be used in cooking and baking. It measures and pours like sugar. It is sold under the brand name Splenda.

Splenda can be used whenever you use sugar in cooking and baking. However, it works best in recipes where sugar is used primarily for sweetening, such as fruit fillings, custards, sauces, and marinades. It also works well in quick breads, muffins, cookies, and pies. In recipes where sugar provides bulk structure to the product, such as yellow or chocolate cakes, you’ll need to make a few changes in your recipe for best results. In recipes where the amount of sugar is quite high, such as meringues, caramel, pecan pies, and angel food or pound cakes, complete substitution for the entire sweetener called for may not yield the best results.

Sugar’s Colorful Past

The production of granulated white sugar, the most common baking sugar, is a complex and labor intensive job. Although the juice of sugarcane is almost 13% sucrose, it contains a lot of other stuff that makes it unpalatable in its natural state. This has to be removed (no easy task), and the remainder has to undergo a number of other processes to leave a crystalline structure that can be used for food consumption.

Sugarcane presumably originated in the South Pacific and then, with human migration, traveled west to Asia. It had reached the Indian subcontinent sometime before the Christian era and was used there to make a kind of raw sugar for sweetening. It continued traveling west with the Persians and then with the Arabians who conquered them. The Crusades made the connection between the Middle East and Europe during the Middle Ages. Venice was to become the conduit for Eastern sugar flowing to Europe during that period, although it didn’t reach England until early in the fourteenth century.

Over the next several hundred years, as Europeans developed a real taste for cane sugar, it was clear that the potential market for this sweetener was vast. So, in spite of the obstacles, the sugar industry was aggressively developed. This precipitated one of the ugliest periods in European and American history and had an enormous impact on how the Western Hemisphere was colonized and exploited, as well as how Africa was exploited and de-colonized.

In their search for an appropriate climate to grow sugarcane and to break their dependence on Middle Eastern sugar, Europeans found their way to the West Indies. To facilitate the production of sugar, hundreds of thousands of slaves were brought there from Africa. Thus began that infamous trade of slaves, molasses and sugar, and rum that created enormous fortunes, new and thriving ports, and a social blight that eventually led to our own Civil War.

The hideous conditions that sugar-producing slaves had to endure finally induced the European countries to outlaw the importation of West Indian sugar. As a result, this eventually allowed the development of another sugar source, the sugar beet. Because sugar beets can be grown in cooler climates than sugarcane, it has become a thriving crop in the United States, Europe, and Russia. The world’s sugar consumption is now divided pretty evenly between cane and beet sugars, although the United States is now using a form of corn sugar, fructose, in many manufactured products such as soft drinks.

Up until the early part of the twentieth century, some cane sugar still arrived in Europe and North America in “loaves.” In the early years of West Indian sugar production the loaves were cones that were approximately a foot or more in diameter at the base and 3 feet high. A cone of sugar this size weighed about 30 pounds and lasted a very long time. As time went on, smaller and more manageable “loaves” became available in 14-pound and 8- or 9-pound sizes. To remove usable sugar from these loaves, the housewife had a special sugar cutter to cut off chunks that were kept in sugar drawers or boxes. When one wanted sugar for cooking, it was then pounded into granules.

The conical shape of the sugar helps explain molasses production. To make granulated or crystallized sugar, the cane was first crushed, then cleared of impurities and finally cooked until almost all the water had boiled off. It was then poured into cone-shaped clay molds to crystallize and harden. There was a hole in the tip so during this crystallization period, which lasted several days, any liquid residue (molasses) ran out the hole into a collection vessel. Often this meant that there were several grades of sugar in the cone. It was clearest and whitest at the wide (top) end and grew increasingly dark and more like what we think of as brown sugar toward the tip.

Europe’s first reaction to sugar was to use it as a spice and a flavoring. This perhaps explains the medieval taste for dishes that were both savory and sweet, the remnants of which we have today in plum puddings and mincemeat pies, which were originally composed of much meat and some fruit. One of the earliest confections that could be considered simply a candy were almonds coated with sugar. These evolved into marzipan, a paste made of almonds and sugar ground together, which has become an integral part of European confection making and baking.

Other Ingredients

Flour, sugar, butter, water, milk, yeast—these are the workhorses of the baking world. But other key ingredients add such wonderful finesse to baked goods. What would the world be without chocolate? Without vanilla? How these and other baking accoutrements are chosen and used can be the defining element in your finished good.

Chocolate

Chocolate, theobroma cacao, “food of the gods,” is one of those significant discoveries from the New World that has changed the lives (for better and worse) of all those who have come in contact with it. The cacao tree originated in the river valleys of South America. Sometime in the fifth century, the tree’s seeds, or beans, were carried into what is now Mexico by the Mayas. When Columbus arrived in the New World he took seeds from the cacao tree back to Spain. As with many things ahead of their time, so was chocolate, at least in Europe. Spain wasn’t interested. So it took another generation and another explorer to make the chocolate connection between new world and old. The rest, as they say, is history (see pages 509–510). It became such a prized ingredient that we still think of it as special.

Cocoa

Natural Cocoa: Cocoa sold in the United States contains between 11% and 24% cocoa butter, with most supermarket cocoas falling in the 12% to 16% range. In Britain, cocoa must contain a minimum of 20% fat (the British know and like their fats). But they may know something else as well. Because fats are carriers of flavor, cocoa that has had most of the cocoa butter removed from it loses its flavor fairly quickly. Natural cocoa is light brown and has, because of its acidity, a slight edge to it. Because natural cocoa is acidic, you most often use baking soda, rather than baking powder, when you bake with it. The chemical reaction between the two creates carbon dioxide bubbles, which leaven the batter. At the same time, the baking soda neutralizes the acidity of the cocoa and the cocoa color darkens. Because of its lighter color and unique flavor, natural cocoa is used to make the beverage itself, as well as frosting, chocolate sauce, and fudge.

Dutch-Process (Dutched) Cocoa: Dutch-process cocoa is either neutral or slightly alkaline. When you bake with it, you’ll most often use baking powder rather than baking soda. Baking powder contains the acid that’s needed for leavening that’s been removed from the cocoa. Dutched cocoas are best in cakes and cookies.

If you have some cocoa and don’t know whether it’s natural or Dutch-process, stir some into a little warm water. Add a pinch of baking soda. If the cocoa fizzes and becomes a deeper color, you have natural cocoa. If it doesn’t fizz, it’s been Dutched.

Black Cocoa: This is cocoa that has been severely Dutched, which intensifies the darkening and also the flavor. Use 1 or 2 tablespoons in conjunction with regular Dutch-process cocoa. This is the cocoa that makes Oreo cookies so dark.

Solid Chocolate

Bitter (Unsweetened) Baking Chocolate: Baking chocolate is essentially pure chocolate liquor—the ground cacao bean itself, plus chocolate solids and cocoa butter. It contains no sugar. This is the only chocolate that’s fairly straightforward.

Sweet Chocolate: This ranges from bittersweet to semisweet. There are different varieties and grades but in the United States they must contain a minimum of 35% chocolate liquor. The best bittersweet varieties contain 65% to 70%; in general, the higher the percentage of chocolate liquor, the darker and stronger the chocolate. Also included is sugar, additional cocoa butter, and such flavorings as vanilla beans (the whole bean), vanillin, salt, and / or spices (cinnamon, cloves, etc.). If a chocolate contains 70% chocolate liquor, what is the rest? Ideally, just sugar, vanilla, and milk powder if it’s a milk chocolate. Because cocoa butter is expensive, some eating chocolates contain other vegetable fats to keep their price down.

From Tree to Table

For the past 25 years, most of the chocolate that’s consumed worldwide, more than half a million tons a year, comes from Ghana. But the world’s “chocolate belt” encircles the globe, located in those tropical countries within about 20 degrees south and north of the equator (the areas known as the Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer, respectively). Some of the finest varieties come from this hemisphere.

The cacao tree produces buds, blossoms, and fruit on an ongoing basis. The pods (fruit), which are 9^″ or 10^″ in length and 4^″ or 5^″ in diameter, look a bit like large acorn squash, with ridges more rounded than sharp. As the pods become ripe, they’re gathered, split open with a machete, and allowed to dry for 24 hours. The seeds within the pulp are then removed and thrown into boxes, where they begin to ferment. This is called “sweating,” which goes on for several days. During fermentation, the juice of the pulp in which the seeds (or beans) are embedded drains away, the germ within the bean dies, the beans themselves develop a reddish tint, their bitterness is tempered, and their flavor developed.

After the fermenting period, the beans are spread out in the sun or a kiln, where their moisture is reduced from about 33% to 6% or 7%. The flavor continues to develop and become less acidic. At this point the beans are bagged (it takes 20 to 30 beans to make a pound) and sent to a chocolate-processing plant.

The bean itself consists of the husk or shell (14%) and the interior kernel or “nib” (86%). The nibs are about 50% fat (the cocoa butter), 17% protein, and 30% various types of complex carbohydrates. They’re particularly rich in potassium, calcium, phosphorus, and, of course, caffeine (although not as much as one might think—certainly less than coffee or even tea).

At the processing plant the beans are cleaned and roasted, allowing the chocolate flavor and color to emerge. The nibs pull away from the shells, making them easier to remove. Once the shells have been cracked open and winnowed away, just the nibs are left, and the process of making chocolate can begin. The nibs are screened by size, then mixed with others from other plantations to create blends that will suit different needs and tastes. Then they’re ground. During the grinding process, the beans are heated, melting the fatty part (the cocoa butter) and creating a fairly liquid mass that we know as “chocolate liquor” (which has nothing at all to do with alcohol). Chocolate liquor is a combination of about 47% chocolate solids and 53% cocoa butter.

Chocolate liquor is processed in three ways. If it’s to be made into bitter (or unsweetened baking) chocolate, the pure liquor itself is molded into cakes and chilled. If it’s to be made into eating chocolate, additional cocoa butter and sugar are added and then it’s conched, a kneading or rolling process taking 4 to 24 hours, which aerates, mellows, and creates that famous silky consistency of the best chocolate. After conching, it’s molded into bars or blocks and cooled.

If it’s to be made into cocoa, the liquor is pressed hydraulically to remove a certain percent of the fat or cocoa butter (which goes into eating chocolate or is made into “white” chocolate). The remaining solids are pulverized into a powder or “cocoa.”

Cocoa Substitutions

If a recipe calls for a natural cocoa and baking soda and you want to use Dutch-process cocoa, substitute an equal amount of Dutch-process cocoa but replace the soda with twice the amount of baking powder. If the recipe calls for Dutch-process cocoa and baking powder, substitute the same amount of natural cocoa but replace the baking powder with half the amount of baking soda. To substitute for a 1-ounce (28g) square of bitter baking chocolate, use 3 tablespoons (16g) of cocoa and 1 tablespoon (12g) of vegetable shortening, oil, or butter. To substitute unsweetened cocoa for 1 ounce (28g) of semisweet chocolate, use the above formula, and add 3 tablespoons (37g) of granulated sugar.

Bittersweet Chocolate: Used often in baking, bittersweet chocolate has a stronger chocolate flavor than semisweet chocolate because it contains less sugar. But because the amount of sugar is not regulated, what one manufacturer calls bittersweet may be called semisweet by another manufacturer, so what you use is a matter of choice and taste.

Milk Chocolate: This contains 15% to 20% milk solids substituted for a portion of the chocolate liquor. Although this is America’s favorite eating chocolate, it’s not used often in baking.

“White” Chocolate: We all know there’s no such thing; to be “chocolate” there must be chocolate solids present. The best white chocolate is made from cocoa butter, with sugar and milk solids added.

Coating Chocolate (Couverture): The best contains no other fat than cocoa butter, which is tempered to behave in a certain way. Because tempering is a bit tricky, other coating chocolates exist that contain other vegetable fats that aren’t so heat-sensitive and don’t require tempering. But these lack the texture, shine, and flavor of chocolate made solely with cocoa butter. Coating chocolate is not the same as chocolate coating.

Hybrid Chocolate: Hybrid chocolates are those that contain fats in addition to cocoa butter. Due to the difference in melting points, some hybrid chocolates can have a waxy texture as a result. Brands that contain only cocoa butter are regarded as higher quality. But even the “best” need to be judged based on personal taste and inclination.

Chocolate Chips: Most are usually hybrid chocolate and should be used where they are called for. For example, they should not be substituted for other baking chocolate made only with cocoa butter, because they won’t behave the same way. Some chips, made for the professional baker, are made just with cocoa butter. Make sure you check the label.

Tempering Chocolate

Cocoa butter, also known as theobroma oil, is a very stable fat. It contains natural antioxidants that discourage rancidity and allow chocolate to be stored for two to five years. For chocolate aficionados, it’s most valued for the way it behaves in the mouth. While it remains brittle at room temperature or lower, it begins to melt just below body temperature, which creates the silky, sensuous “mouth feel” of high-quality chocolate.

You can only temper chocolate that contains cocoa butter—no other kind of fat. Cocoa butter is actually not just one fat, but a variety of structurally different components. Some of them melt at a higher temperature than others. When chocolate has been heated and begins to cool, the high-melt-point fats solidify first. These are the ones that give high-quality chocolate its shine and snap.

The object of tempering is to create an evenly distributed, very fine fat-crystal structure, which will yield chocolate that remains shiny as it hardens. Because the high-melt-point fats solidify (crystallize) first, you’re trying to “seed” the chocolate with these crystals, so the other fats will build their structure upon them as they cool and begin to set.

The easiest way to temper chocolate is with a chocolate tempering machine, available to the home baker through some catalogues, or at gourmet stores. To temper chocolate without a machine, place it in a double boiler (rather than over direct heat, because it can burn so easily). Heat dark or semisweet chocolate to 122°F; for milk or white chocolate, 105°F.

It’s important not to let any moisture infiltrate the chocolate, or it will seize (become grainy). Allow the chocolate to melt uncovered to allow any steam generated to dissipate. Seizing is essentially a chaotic crystallization of all the fats around the point where the water entered; it’s characterized by chocolate that has turned into a lumpy, grainy, unfortunate mass.

Once the chocolate is melted, remove two-thirds of it from the heat, set it in a cool place, and stir constantly until it reaches a temperature of 78°F. At this point, fine fat crystals have formed and the chocolate is thick and pasty. Many chocolate manufacturers recommend slow cooling with constant stirring in order to produce the best texture, but there are a number of pastry chefs who prefer to speed things up by stirring the chocolate over cold water or by pouring it onto a marble slab and working it with a bench knife until it’s cool. When the chocolate has reached 78°F, stir it back into the hot chocolate. The temperature should then be about 88°F. At this point, the chocolate is tempered.

After the tempered chocolate has cooled and crystallized appropriately, it’s too thick for dipping, molding, or anything else and must be warmed slightly before it can be used. Again, using a double boiler, it should be reheated to 88°F (for milk or white chocolate) to 90°F (for dark chocolate), where it’s liquid enough to use. Don’t let it get warmer than this, or the fat crystals will melt and come “out of temper.” If that happens, it will take a long time to set and when it finally does, the texture won’t be as good; it can remain tacky to the touch or become streaky when it sets. In addition, some of the cocoa butter can migrate to the surface, causing the chocolate to “bloom.”

There are two types of chocolate bloom, both the result of storage conditions. Fat bloom happens when chocolate has been stored where it’s too warm. The low-melt-point fat crystals melt and recrystallize in larger crystals, which migrate to the surface of the chocolate. This makes the chocolate look as if it had been dusted with a gray or white powder. While it might look moldy, it’s not; it can still be used for baking and/or the crystals can be recrystallized to assume their original form by tempering.

Sugar bloom happens when chocolate has been stored where it’s damp. Because sugar is hygroscopic, moisture can condense on the surface of the chocolate and will slowly dissolve the sugars it comes in contact with. As it evaporates, it will leave small sugar crystals on the surface, which we experience as roughness.

Chocolate Extract: This is a natural extract from a special blend of cocoa beans that enhances the chocolate flavoring in baked goods. It’s available through specialty shops and catalogues.

Vanilla

This is a “new world” flavor from an orchid that grew only in Central America until the middle of the nineteenth century. The Aztecs used it for flavor in conjunction with cacao. From here it made its way to the Philippines and, in 1846, to Tahiti. But the orchid wouldn’t produce a bean just anywhere. In Mexico, a specific type of bee and hummingbird were responsible for its pollination and the subsequent bean. Finally, in Madagascar, in what used to be known as the Bourbon Islands (from the name of the royal French family) off the southeast coast of Africa, it was discovered that the flowers could be pollinated by hand. Thus began the successful pursuit of the commercial growing of vanilla beans, the “Bourbon vanilla” which is about 75% of the vanilla that we use today.

The process of creating vanilla is intensive and long so it is still an expensive flavoring. After the flowers are pollinated, bean pods begin to form, and take about a month and a half to reach full size, somewhere between 6^″ and 10^″ in length. They are picked before they are ripe, heated quickly to stop the ripening process, and then placed in the sun to dry. For several days, they dry in the sun during the day and are wrapped up to sweat at night. Then they are laid out to dry completely in the shade. Finally they are sorted and placed in containers to continue to age for as long as 9 months, during which time flavor and character are developed.

Today, Mexican vanilla is relatively scarce because its habitat has been reduced. But Mexican vanilla is considered by some to be the best in the world because of its complex and desirable flavor. Make sure you buy Mexican vanilla from a reliable source, as sometimes it’s cut with other (potentially dangerous) ingredients. Tahitian vanilla is preferred by some for its flowery mellow aroma and flavor. Indonesian vanilla has the simplest flavor. Madagascar vanilla is the most widely used and is also preferred by many.

Vanilla is available as a whole bean (from which you can flavor any number of things, including sugar). It is also available ground to a powder, which is wonderful in custard, cookies, ice cream, and whipped cream—anywhere that you want an intense vanilla flavor and the visibility of bean flecks. Because the flavor of the powder doesn’t evaporate when heated (vanilla extract loses some of its flavor in heating), it’s well suited for baked goods. Vanilla extract, the essential oil of the vanilla bean dissolved in alcohol, is more widely available. There are double- and triple-strength vanilla extracts, as well as a vanilla essence so strong that only a drop or two is needed. These are available through special suppliers by mail order. To minimize the evaporation of vanilla extract when making cookies or cakes, always add it to the butter and sugar when you cream them. The butter acts as a buffer and protects it from the heat, resulting in more flavor. Vanilla paste can be used measure-for-measure in place of vanilla extract but with the addition of flecks of vanilla bean that are evident in the end product. One tablespoon of vanilla paste equals one vanilla bean.

A Bit of Chocolate History

For early Meso-Americans, the cacao tree played an important role. The beans were precious enough to be used as currency. The beans were also the source of an unsweetened drink, xocoatl, made by pounding them and mixing them with boiling water. Xocoatl was drunk and cacao beans offered to the deities that presided over every important ritual during their lives.

At court, Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés was ceremoniously served xocoatl, this beverage of the gods, the name coming from an Aztec word meaning “bitter water.” Bitter it was. Not long after this congenial welcome, Cortés, in the name of Spain, took Montezuma prisoner and slaughtered hundreds of his people. Montezuma died while in captivity and the ascendancy of the Aztec nation came to a halt. Two years later, the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City), was under Spanish control.

Cortés returned to Spain by way of Africa, planting some of his Mexican cacao beans there. This agrarian impulse enabled Spain, which ultimately acknowledged the value of the cacao bean, to monopolize the trade in chocolate for the next century. Today the bulk of the world’s chocolate is supplied by trees that are the descendants of those that Cortés took to Africa.

The Spanish treated chocolate differently than had the Meso-Americans. They sweetened it with honey and flavored it with cinnamon and vanilla. Served hot as a restorative, this new incarnation of the cacao tree remained a Spanish secret for close to a century before it found its way over the border to France. The French acquired chocolate when Jews were expelled from Spain and subsequently settled in the region of Bayonne, just over the Spanish border. The French initially considered the bitter paste made from the cacao bean to be noxious, so its production was forced outside the town limits. As many perceptions are changed from the top down, Spanish nobility who married into the French court helped illuminate their countrymen about the virtues of chocolate. Ultimately, Bayonne chocolate was celebrated by its citizens.

Once chocolate became the darling of the aristocrats, its movement into other markets began to happen more quickly. In the early seventeenth century a recipe found its way into Italy. In 1657, a Frenchman opened a shop in London called the Coffee Mill and Tobacco Roll, from which he sold this bitter chocolate paste to be used for beverage making. This initial appearance of chocolate in England was so expensive (it cost more than half its weight in gold because of excessively high import duties on cacao beans) that again, only the wealthy could afford to buy and use it.

Wherever it went, people experimented with flavorings. Vanilla, the one favored by the Aztecs, has survived to become the flavor most frequently paired with chocolate, although many others have been tried. Chocolate flavored with cloves was popular in the seventeenth century. Anise, ginger, pepper, and chilies have also been used. Today you’ll find chocolate flavored with honey, as well as coffee, almond, hazelnuts, and, in Spain and Mexico, almost always, cinnamon. And in today’s desserts, chocolate is paired with oranges, raspberries, strawberries, and other fruits.

Because so much ritual grows up around those things we perceive to be valuable and available only to a select few, there appeared in London, Amsterdam, and other European capitals fashionable chocolate houses where the wealthy would gather to savor this esoteric “restorative” drink. It wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century, when the duty on cacao beans was lowered to a rate of a penny a pound, that chocolate ceased being a luxury and began its ascendancy into popular culture.

In 1828, a Dutchman, C. J. Van Houten, found that by treating the cacao nibs with an alkali, he could make them release their fat (cocoa butter) more easily; the flavor was improved and the color darkened. This process has come to be known as “Dutching.” Once chocolate liquor could be separated into its constituents, a great many opportunities for the evolution of chocolate presented themselves. The flavor of the chocolate was not contained in the fat, but in the separated solids. These solids, pulverized into a powder we now know as cocoa, were much more intensely flavored and the ability to handle cocoa butter separately made possible the next important incarnation of chocolate.

As time went on, many of the names that we now associate with chocolate began building on each other’s discoveries. In England, first Fry and Sons and then Cadbury found that by adding sugar and additional cocoa butter to chocolate liquor, they could create a solid chocolate. Although we think of the Swiss as the originators of some the most successful recipes for making chocolate, they were actually slow to get to it. The Italians dominated in the eighteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century, the Swiss began to become serious about chocolate. In 1819, the first Swiss chocolate factory was opened by François-Louis Cailler. Jean Tobler, of Toblerone fame, didn’t make his appearance until the beginning of the twentieth century.

Because we also associate dairy products with the Swiss, it wasn’t an accident that the Swiss developed another chocolate incarnation: milk chocolate. Earlier in the century, Henri Nestlé, a Swiss chemist, developed a process to make what we now know as condensed milk. In 1875, a Swiss chocolate manufacturer named Daniel Peter (who married into the Cailler chocolate dynasty) combined Henri Nestlé’s condensed milk with his chocolate product. And so milk chocolate was born. Another significant contribution made by the Swiss was that of Rodolphe Lindt, who developed “conching,” a kneading/rolling process that both improved flavor and removed the grittiness that had been associated with solid chocolate.

Chocolate finally made its way back across the Atlantic, north of its original origins, to the American colonies in the eighteenth century. Because the colonists were entranced by it, New England sea captains began bringing home cacao beans from their trading voyages to the West Indies. So Americans became seriously involved in the story of chocolate at just about the same time as the Europeans.

The manufacture of chocolate started in the United States in 1765 in Milton Lower Falls, near Dorchester, Massachusetts. James Baker financed the first water-powered chocolate mill. Since then, other US companies have become involved in the manufacture of chocolate. Although there’s a sense that the best chocolate comes from Europe, there are today a number of US manufacturers that produce extremely high-quality chocolate, as well as a booming scene for small-batch, artisanal bars.

Make Your Own Vanilla

You can make your own vanilla extract by combining a vanilla bean, slit lengthwise and cut into 3 pieces, with 1 cup unflavored vodka or brandy. Put the mixture in a nonreactive container (glass is ideal) and let it steep for 2 to 8 weeks, or longer. The longer it steeps, the stronger the vanilla will be. Although this won’t have the complexity of flavor of professionally manufactured vanilla extract, it’s eminently suitable for recipes where vanilla plays a minor, rather than starring, role.

Almonds and Almond Flavoring

Next to vanilla, almond extract is probably the baker’s most frequently used flavoring. Almonds, too, are an important ingredient in many baked goods. Almonds grow on flowering 20- to 30-foot-tall trees, beautiful enough that in some areas they are grown just for their aesthetic characteristics. The almond belongs to the same genus as apricots, cherries, plums, and peaches, but its fruit is not equivalently succulent; what we eat is the seed.

Trees that are grown for the almonds they produce are found in a fairly narrow band around the world where conditions are frost-free but not tropical. Although you will find producing almond trees in most Mediterranean countries, today California supplies more than half of the world’s supply.

There are two types of almond: bitter and sweet.

Sweet Almonds are the ones we eat, with or without skins, unblanched or blanched. The skins are edible but can sometimes be bitter. If they’re not too bitter (the taste test will determine this), don’t bother blanching them because the skin adds positive flavor notes to whatever you’re making.

Almonds have a mild flavor. You can find them in most groceries whole, sliced, slivered, and as meal or flour. Almond paste and marzipan are made of blanched sweet almonds that have been ground with sugar and almond extract to sweeten and intensify the flavor. Almond paste has less sugar than marzipan and is more coarsely ground; it’s mostly used as a filling, while marzipan is rolled out to cover cakes, or colored and often shaped for decorations.

Bitter Almonds, cousins of the sweet almond, contain prussic acid, which is highly toxic. It makes the nuts so unpleasant to taste that it is unlikely that anyone would eat enough (50 or so can be lethal) to do any harm. It is these almonds from which oil is extracted—the prussic acid is destroyed during processing—and blended with ethyl alcohol to make almond extract, probably the most common baking extract after vanilla. Bitter almond oil is also sold without the addition of alcohol; it’s extremely strong and should be used by the drop rather than by the teaspoon.

Like any nuts that contain oil, almonds will eventually become rancid. Packaged natural almonds can be stored in unopened packages in a cool dark place for up to two years. Unopened roasted almonds can be stored under the same conditions up to one year.

Almond flour and nuts that are blanched, slivered, and chopped should be stored in an airtight container in the pantry for no more than one year. Both will last even longer if refrigerated. Almond paste can be stored in the refrigerator up to two years. A hot pantry will hasten rancidity.

Other Extracts, Oils, and Flavors

Extracts are made from the essential oils and / or flavoring components of natural ingredients dissolved in alcohol. There is a great array available, including those from fruit, nuts, and seeds and such things as mint and coffee. If you don’t want to use an alcohol-based extract, which is the most common form, there are also glycerin-based extracts available from specialty shops and catalogues that perform the same way and with the same intensity of flavor.

Other Essential Oils available include orange, lemon, and lime. These are very powerful and very little is needed to add flavor to any baked good. The oil comes from the skin of the fruit (the zest), where there is an intensity of flavor. Zest from both oranges and lemons is available although it’s easy to create your own.

Flower Waters are other flavoring agents. The ones most commonly available are made from the essential oils of rose petals and orange flower petals. They are more subtle than oils but add lovely overtones to lightly flavored confections, whipped cream, ice cream, sponge cake, and angel food cake.

Butterscotch and caramel are often confused with each other. Today it is usually accepted that the flavor of butterscotch is that of brown sugar cooked with butter. To make butterscotch candy, according to F. Marian McNeill in The Scots Kitchen, you cook a combination of 1 pound of brown sugar with ¼ pound of butter to the soft-crack stage. Then you remove it from the heat, flavor it with a touch of ginger and a bit of lemon zest, beat it with a fork for a few minutes, and pour it on a slab to cool. Crack off pieces with the back of a knife.

Caramel is produced by cooking granulated sugar in a heavy pan until it melts and caramelizes; that is, it becomes liquid, then undergoes the Maillard reaction, which creates a cascade of complex and delicious flavors. Caramel can range in color from light to deep brown by cooking it somewhere between 320°F to 350°F. You’ll also find caramelized sugar on crème brulée, which is done with a small culinary blowtorch or with a caramelizing iron. If caramel is cooked until it’s very dark, it can be used as coloring in a variety of things from breads (usually rye) to gravy.

Spices and Herbs

Allspice: This New World spice is from a tree in the myrtle family and was thought by Columbus to be pepper, which he was hoping to find at the end of his voyage, and which the allspice berry resembles. Today, most of the world’s supply is grown in Jamaica and Jamaican allspice is coveted. Although it has its own personality, allspice is suggestive of a combination of other aromatic spices, particularly cinnamon and cloves but with a hint of nutmeg and black pepper. Allspice berries can be used whole in marinades or pickling. Ground allspice is available in most groceries or you can grind your own. A touch is wonderful in applesauce and it can also be used with other spices in fruit desserts, steamed puddings, pies, and cakes. As a substitute, try ground cloves, about one-quarter the amount of allspice called for, and a touch of nutmeg.

Anise: This self-seeding annual, related to parsley, dill, and caraway, comes from countries bordering the eastern Mediterranean. It tastes like a sweet licorice and is used, as a seed, to flavor a variety of European breads, but it is also used to flavor other baked goods and desserts. As a substitute, try fennel.

Star Anise: This has some of the same flavor components and can also be used in baked goods. It is native to China and comes from an evergreen related to the magnolia.

Caraway: This plant is related to anise (their aromas are faintly similar), parsley, and dill. It is most frequently used as a seed rather than ground into a powder and, as such, is used to flavor many German and northern European breads as well as some Irish soda breads. You will also find it in some cheeses. Caraway is used most frequently in savory goods, but it can also be an interesting counterpoint in sweet goods, particularly paired with citrus or, in the case of soda breads, raisins. Caraway is not easily substituted. A caraway-flavored thyme comes close but is not easily available unless you grow your own. Fennel is another option.

Cardamom: A member of the ginger family, cardamom, after vanilla and saffron, is the third most expensive spice in the world. It grows as a perennial herb in South India and Sri Lanka, and also in Guatemala. The pods, which are about the size of a plump raisin, encapsulate three small compartments that contain tiny seeds. The pods should be either green or white (not brown or black, which is not true cardamom and of less interest to the baker). It is used to flavor teas and certain traditional baked goods from Germany and Scandinavia. The crushed seeds (a rolling pin does this nicely) produce the strongest flavor, although they can be bought already ground. If you have no cardamom, try substituting ginger.

Cinnamon: This spice comes from the dried bark of a tree native to Sri Lanka. It grows only there and in India and is the only true cinnamon recognized in Britain. But there are two types of “cinnamon” acknowledged in the United States and a number of other countries as well. The second is the one with which we are probably most familiar. This is cassia cinnamon, which is a member of the same family as true cinnamon, a type of laurel. This cinnamon is native to Southeast Asia, southern China, northern Vietnam, and Indonesia. Both are harvested from the bark of a tree. You can tell the difference between sticks of the former and the latter by the way they roll. Sticks of the Ceylon cinnamon—the sort grown in Sri Lanka—curl just in one direction, looking like rolled up paper. Sticks of cassia curl inward from both sides to resemble a scroll. Both types are available ground as well. The color as well as the flavor of Ceylon cinnamon is lighter. Cassia cinnamon is darker, redder, and more intense; one subset of cassia cinnamon is known as Vietnamese or Saigon cinnamon—it has an extra-strong strong and “spicy” flavor. Most of the cinnamon we buy at the grocery store is cassia cinnamon. But there are commercial cinnamons that are a blend of the two. If you buy ground cinnamon, buy it in small quantities as the flavor deteriorates with time. If you are out of cinnamon, you can substitute allspice with maybe a touch of ginger and nutmeg, but use about a quarter as much. Try sprinkling some cinnamon on French toast as you cook it before you turn it over.

Cloves: This perennial evergreen shrub native to the Moluccas in East Indonesia belongs to the myrtle family. The unopened flower bud, picked by hand and then dried, becomes the little nail-like seed container that we know as cloves. In fact, the name “clove” evolved through a number of Latin-based languages and was ultimately incorporated into Middle English as “clowe,” meaning nail shaped. Cloves are used commonly to flavor both savory and sweet foods. But, as has been stated by an astute culinarian, “The flavor is best when kept below the level of recognition.” Cloves are available whole or ground. The most appropriate substitute is allspice.

Ginger: Not known as a wild plant, ginger probably originally came from Southeast Asia. It’s been in use for several thousand years both for culinary as well as medicinal purposes. It reached Europe via Rome. When Rome fell, it was reintroduced to the West by Marco Polo. In medieval times, ginger as a flavoring became very common in England, and in fact, ginger and pepper were two of the most frequently used spices. It was at that point that gingerbread became part of culinary history. Ginger and gingerbread were for medieval England what chocolate is for us today. In pre-twentieth-century cookbooks, you’ll find numerous “receipts” for ginger-based cakes.

Today half the world’s ginger comes from India, but it is also grown in China, Hawaii, Africa, and some parts of the Middle East. Australia has become a new player and is the source of some of the best crystallized ginger. In the Eastern Hemisphere, ginger is used widely to flavor savory foods. In Europe and the United States, it is used most frequently in sweet baked goods. But we also experience it in ginger ale. For the baker, ginger is available as the whole root, the mature root dried and powdered, the young root crystallized, and in ginger syrup or extract. Powdered ginger is quite different from fresh or crystallized ginger and isn’t an appropriate substitute when the former are called for. If you are out of powdered ginger, you might try allspice with a little cinnamon or mace.

Lavender: Historically, lavender was used by the Greeks and Romans as a bath perfume. It was introduced into Britain in 1568, and English gardeners started an immediate love affair with the plant. Pillows and sachets were stuffed with dried lavender flowers, and lavender “washing water” came into use. The culinary use of the flower was noted as early as the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Powdered lavender was served as a condiment, and the queen so enjoyed conserve of lavender that it was always on her table. In this country, the Shakers used lavender in cooking, in their famous lemon pies and lemon breads. Its penetrating, sunny taste marries surprisingly well with the flavors of both butter and vanilla. Long overlooked as an edible flower, lavender makes a delightful contribution to baked goods. The pleasures of lavender transcend the garden when the flower is dried and used in baking. Anticipate the essence of summer by using lavender in pound cakes, cookies, and bread.

Mace and Nutmeg: These spices come from the same tree, native to the Moluccas in Indonesia, although it’s grown today in Grenada. After the fruit is removed (the fruit itself is dried with palm sugar and eaten as a snack food in Indonesia), you’ll find a thin, lacy, leathery reddish tissue on the outside of the pit. This is called mace, and is removed, dried, and then sold either whole, as “blade mace,” or ground. Mace has a faint aroma of nutmeg, but you’ll also smell undertones of cinnamon, maybe cloves and ginger. You can substitute any or a combination of those if you don’t have any on hand.

After the mace has been removed and the nutmeg pit dried, the shell is cracked and the nutmeg is removed to be sold whole or as powder. Nutmeg has a flavor all its own, which belongs in eggnog, but you’ll also find a touch in savory dishes as well, such as quiche and béchamel sauce. Nutmeg’s flavor makes it difficult to find a substitute, but try a little cinnamon, ginger, or mace.

Mint: A great addition to a baker’s kitchen, mint comes in a wide array of flavors. Apple, chocolate, orange, peppermint, spearmint, and pineapple all can be used to flavor syrups, frostings, candy, and chocolate.

Pepper: True pepper, or piper nigrum, grows on a tropical vine native to the Kingdom of Travancore and Malabar Coast of India (the southwestern tip). Although one of the finest kinds still comes from that part of India, it is now cultivated near the equator around the globe.

Like many other spices, pepper has played an important role in the power struggles throughout our history. It was valued so highly that it spurred new trade routes between the East and West. Like salt, it was used during the Middle Ages as money.

Black pepper is dried from still green but-about-to-be-ripe peppercorns. White peppercorns are dried from the hulled version of the same fruit after it has reached maturity. By changing the time of picking and drying, you can make black, white, red, and green pepper from the same plant. Tellicherry (a district on the Malabar Coast of India) pepper is dried from peppercorns that have been allowed to ripen beyond green to a yellow-orange. Because pickers wait until just this point to harvest them, this pepper has particularly rich flavor. This method is used only in India. Tellicherry peppercorns are larger than typical black peppercorns and their color is a dark, warm brown. They are slightly more expensive than regular black pepper because it’s riskier to wait to pick until that precise point of ripeness. Another equally good type is the Lampong pepper (from the Lampong district of southeastern Sumatra, the second largest of the Indonesian islands). These two are considered the best varieties of black pepper.

Black pepper enhances savory dishes but it can also be used to enhance and give a little extra “spice” to sweet goods such as gingerbread, steamed puddings, and spice cakes. White pepper is missing the outer skin of black pepper, which contains some of the flavor components. Although it’s more expensive than black pepper because it takes more work to produce, white pepper is used primarily where the black flecks of black pepper are not wanted.

Saffron: The costliest of all the spices, real saffron is the dried stigma of a crocus flower that originated probably in Persia but today is grown from Spain to Kashmir. It was of great importance in medieval Europe where it was used as both a flavoring and a dye.

The dried stigmas look like red threads and, when soaked in a liquid, emit a bright yellow color. One hundred fifty thousand flowers are needed for one kilogram of dried saffron. Less expensive varieties are often adulterated with the yellow stamen of the flower, which has the right color but no flavor of its own. Spain and Iran are the largest producers, accounting for more than 80% of the world’s production.

Saffron has long flavored a cake unique to the west country of England, called Saffron Cake. It’s also important in a Swedish bread (Lussekatter or St. Lucia cats) that is made for the festival of Santa Lucia. You’ll find it also as a dominant flavor in Provençal bouillabaisse. The flavor of saffron is not easily duplicated, although turmeric is an option for producing a yellow color.

Spice Blends

Apple Pie Spice can be any number of combinations, including whatever you decide you like. Here are a couple of commercial ones: cinnamon with a touch of cloves and nutmeg; or a more ambitious version is a blend of cinnamon, fenugreek (an herb that has the aroma of curry and is used in same), lemon peel, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg.

Pumpkin Pie Spice is multiple combinations, but usually includes cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg.

You can use these spice blends to season any apple or pumpkin (or squash) dish, or any other dish you think would benefit from these particular blends of spices. Simply substitute the spice blend for the same amount, combined, of other spices called for in the recipe (excluding salt). For example, if a recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, ¼ teaspoon of cloves, and ¼ teaspoon of allspice, substitute 1½ teaspoons of apple pie spice. Use pumpkin pie spice in a similar manner. You can also sprinkle a little pumpkin pie spice over a dish of baked or mashed squash; or try a dash of apple pie spice on ice cream, or over hot applesauce.

Chai Spice, like curry powder, chai seasonings can be any blend of spices to an individual’s taste, but most blends include ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, allspice, anise, and black pepper. Besides flavoring beverages, it makes compelling shortbread and is good in glazes for scones or muffins.

Salt

Salt has become fashionable and fun. Like bed linens that used to be white, salt now comes in a variety of shapes and colors, from white to gray to red, and physically as small solid cubes to lovely pyramid-shaped crystals. There are some that are less refined with more minerals in them creating, as many are convinced, subtle and unique flavors. And, of course, there are now the flavored “boutique” salts: smoked, garlic, chili, lavender, rosemary, and so on.

In baking, when any of these salts are allowed to dissolve, their impact in a baked product will be hard to differentiate (aside from the flavored ones). But when you use them as accoutrements, there may be flavor differentiations that are more discernible. And there are some that physically will “stick” better and melt more quickly (or not so quickly) on your tongue.

Most fascinating are the cultures and histories that they evoke. All salt comes from the sea, mined from old seabeds deep in the earth, or from salt deposits on the surface, or actively evaporated from the sea.

Salt intensifies and enhances flavors in all baked goods. Because it is hygroscopic, it attracts moisture. This is good in some situations, and not in others (bread crusts for instance). In yeast baking, salt strengthens dough and tightens its structure, which increases the time needed to sufficiently develop the gluten. It also slows fermentation. Bread without salt is insipid. Even the Tuscans’ bread, which is traditionally unsalted, is eaten with salty foods. One of the most appealing ways to eat bread is to spread a slice of pain de campagne with sweet butter and sprinkle it with a bit of fleur de sel, a French sea salt.

There isn’t anything that you can substitute for salt. In most baked goods it’s there in quantities that are small enough not to be a problem. But if you need to reduce your salt intake, try cutting it in half before you eliminate it entirely.

Herbs

These flavorful little leaves are usually used fresh and are delightful in all manner of breads. Some actually have flavors that blend well with sweet goods, such as lemon thyme and caraway.

Basil has an almost licorice or anise-like flavor when it is fresh, which is when it should be used. It is best used on top of flatbreads such as pizza or focaccia, and of course it is the linchpin in pesto or Provençal pistou, both of which are delicious on bread.

Dill flavor can be found in its flowers, fronds, or seeds. Dill seeds are wonderful in breads, particularly soda breads, where you can substitute them for caraway.

Garlic is also best on, rather than in, a bread. Minced raw, it can flavor butter or olive oil, or you can bake it until it is soft and sweet and use it as a condiment. To bake garlic, break a head into individual cloves, spread on a baking sheet, sprinkle with olive oil and a bit of salt, and bake for about 30 minutes. Then squeeze the cloves out of their skins with your fingers and mash.

Oregano and Marjoram are similar in aroma and flavor, with oregano being the more assertive of the two. They can be used in savory quick or yeast breads along with, or in place of, thyme.

Rosemary has a very appealing and assertive flavor that is wonderful with roasted potatoes and lamb, in potato and cheese breads, and paired with ginger in some sweet goods. Unless it’s being cooked in liquid, fresh rosemary is always better in baked goods than dried. Rosemary has antiseptic characteristics and can inhibit yeast growth if more than a tablespoon of the chopped fresh herb is used in a single loaf of bread.

Tarragon is also anise-flavored but different from anise and fennel. You can infuse milk with it to use in sweet breads, or use it in a savory quick bread.

Thyme, like mint, comes in many flavors: lemon, oregano, caraway, and traditional English. Lemon thyme can flavor sweet baked goods, but some of the others are wonderful in savory quick or yeast breads. Thyme is fun to grow and is probably the best way to come by some of the less common versions.

Nuts

Nuts are a wonderful addition to baked goods, adding flavor and texture. Almonds, pecans, and walnuts all seem to have a sweeter and deeper flavor if they are lightly toasted. Because nuts contain a significant amount of oil, you need to buy them fresh. If you buy them in bulk, keep them in the freezer. They’ll keep nicely for up to a year.

To toast, spread nuts on a baking sheet and bake them at 325°F for 8 to 10 minutes or until fragrant. Keep an eye on them because they can burn quickly.

The easiest, fastest way to chop nuts is to put the required amount in a plastic bag, close the bag loosely, and whack nuts with the flat end of a meat mallet or the barrel of a rolling pin. A few whacks will give you coarsely chopped nuts; more whacks, and you’ll get finely chopped, almost ground nuts. To make nut meal, pulse them in a food processor until they are as fine as you want.

Almonds (see page 511).

Chestnuts have had a long history in Europe as a food staple. Chestnut flour was even used to make bread and was the basis of Italian polenta before cornmeal, or maize, was introduced from the Americas. Nowadays it is more of a condiment. Chestnuts are often eaten roasted but chestnut flour, ground from dried chestnuts, can be used in many baked goods.

Coconut, from the coconut palm tree, is almost always used flaked or shredded by bakers. Sometimes it is sweetened as well. It is used to flavor baked goods and sprinkled on top of frosted cakes as decoration, flavor, and for texture.

Hazelnuts, or filberts, are grown in Oregon and farther north, in British Columbia. They are delicious buttery nuts that are wonderful alone, but are particularly wonderful with chocolate. They have a light, crunchy texture and can be used in cakes, breads, cookies, quick breads, and candy—anywhere you want the flavor and texture of nuts. Hazelnuts can also be purchased as a flour.

Here’s an easy way to skin them. Most methods call for you to toast whole hazelnuts, and then to rub them between two towels to release their skins. We’ve found an easier method is to toast the hazelnuts for about 10 minutes (until they begin to brown) in a 325°F oven. Remove the nuts from the oven and let cool for 2 minutes. Put the nuts into a food processor equipped with the plastic dough blade and pulse until the nuts have shed most of their skins. Some of the nuts will crack, but this is quick and very effective. Pick the nuts out of the pile of skins, and you’re ready to roll.

Pecans are a North American nut and probably one of the more frequently used, particularly in the South, where they are native. They are delicious raw and even more so toasted. You can purchase them whole, in pieces, or as meal, although it’s easy to chop your own. You can easily create pecan meal in a food processor. Because of their oil content, they can become bitter fairly quickly, so use them up or keep them in the freezer. They can be used anywhere walnuts (or most other nuts) are called for.

Pine Nuts, or pignoli, are the rich, sweet, small seeds from the pinecones of certain pine trees, which are found in several parts of the world, including the American Southwest. These trees are not easily cultivated and are happier living wild where all kinds of creatures vie for the nuts. The Hopi, Navajo, and other Southwestern tribes have used them as a staple for thousands of years, eaten in every form: whole, ground, and baked into cakes, or pounded into a paste. Today, the most common pine nuts in our groceries are from a tree on the northern coastline of the Mediterranean, from Portugal and Spain in the west to Lebanon in the east. Pine nuts are essential in pesto, but after you’ve nibbled a few, you’ll find you’ll want to put them in other baked goods from quick breads to cookies.

Pistachios, those lovely pale green nuts that are hard to stop eating, have been enjoyed by Middle Easterners for several thousand years. They grow on a small tree native to Turkey and the area around the Caspian Sea. There were formerly forests of pistachio trees from Lebanon, across Syria and eastward through and beyond northern Iraq. There is a variety raised in California. Pistachios are wonderful in ice cream, but you can use them in almost any baked good where you want the texture and flavor of nuts.

Walnuts come from a tree that grows in temperate climates found wild from southeastern Europe all the way to China. Today they grow in abundance in California, especially in the Sacramento Valley, making the United States the largest walnut producer in the world.

Walnuts are related to the pecan, the American butternut (or American white walnut), and the black walnut, all of which grow in the east and whose nuts have a slightly stronger flavor. In baking, they can all be used interchangeably although there are some flavor differences.

Seeds

Seeds add flavor and texture to baked goods. Because, as with nuts, they contain a lot of oil, they are subject to rancidity. Freezing will extend the life of many seeds, but they’re best when fresh.

Chia Seeds are a South American native and botanical member of the mint family. They can absorb 12 times their weight in liquid, creating a gelatinous mixture that is sometimes used as an egg substitute in baking.

Flax Seed, the slightly larger bronze brothers of sesame seeds, can be sprinkled on the outside of bread. But because they are almost useless nutritionally unless the seed coat is cracked, it’s best to use cracked or milled flax seeds in bread. They add a pleasing nutty flavor and their oil makes adding additional fat or oil unnecessary. Buy them often and use them fresh, as they will become rancid over time.

Poppy Seeds are sprinkled on top of many baked goods and add a delicious flavor to coffeecakes and other quick breads. They can also be crushed and used with almonds, sugar, and a touch of lemon in pastry fillings. Toasting can bring out their flavor quite nicely. Buy just enough to use, or freeze what you don’t use.

Pumpkin Seeds, or pepitas, are too large to be used on rolls or breads, but they can certainly be used in them, or in cookies or quick breads. They are enhanced with a bit of toasting.

Sesame Seeds, also called benne seeds, are found in Southern cookies called Benne wafers (see page 113). They have a lovely, nutty flavor that toasting will bring out. You can use them on breads, rolls, and other baked goods, as well as in them. Sesame seeds are also ground into a paste called tahini or sesame butter. Tahini has a nutty flavor that can be used as a dip on its own or mixed with chickpeas, lemon juice, and garlic to make hummus. Sesame seeds mixed with honey are used to make halvah, a Middle Eastern confection.

Sunflower Seeds are our own native seeds. Unhulled they make wonderful bird food (because birds can do their own hulling). Hulled, they taste great plain and, as with small nuts, can be used in many baked goods as well as on them. They are very tasty raw or toasted. And sunflowers are enough to make anyone smile.