A fully stocked baker’s pantry is a thing of unparalleled joy and makes me feel that I have great control over my life. Here are my staples.
UNBLEACHED ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR. Nothing will influence the outcome of a baked good like the type of flour and how it’s measured. I like working with unbleached all-purpose flour for most baked goods. My brands of choice in the North (where the wheat is hard winter wheat, and higher in protein than the soft wheat of the South) are Ceresota and King Arthur, with protein contents hovering around 11.5 percent that are great for doughs. I’m also happy to use Gold Medal unbleached, which is slightly lower in protein, consistent across state lines, and easy to find in American stores. Even if I use cups and spoons for the rest of the recipe, I’ll always weigh my flour for ease and accuracy. In this book, 1 cup of unbleached all-purpose flour weighs 128 grams. If you opt to measure by volume, whisk the container or flour first to aerate it, then spoon it into the cup, then level it off lightly with the back of a knife. If you use bleached flour, it won’t throw off the entire recipe, but it will have a lower protein content and you can expect a slightly different result.
BREAD FLOUR. Even higher in protein than all-purpose, this is ideal for when you want a nice sturdy or chewy bread product, such as pizza crusts, pretzels, or sturdy sandwich loaves. I like King Arthur or Gold Medal unbleached bread flours. Because I use less bread flour than all-purpose, I often keep it sealed in the freezer for longer storage.
CAKE FLOUR. Bleached, and low-protein (about 7 percent), and more finely textured than all-purpose. Best for special occasion cakes needing a light, airy crumb. I don’t often use cake flour, but when I do, I use Swans Down.
CORNSTARCH. The MVP. I know there are a million ways to thicken a pie filling or a custard, but I don’t want all of them cluttering up my already chaotic cabinets. I just buy cornstarch. Cheap, easy, and versatile.
YEAST. Yeast is a thesis-level topic and it can be crazy-making trying to convert from one form or another. To keep it easy, I only use dry instant yeast, not active dry or cakes. I buy SAF brand in bulk or Fleischmann’s in glass jars. If you buy packets, each envelope should contain 2¼ teaspoons/7 grams per envelope, but even with packets, I measure to be sure (I do this with unflavored gelatin packets, too, by the way, which should be 2½ teaspoons/5.8 grams each).
In theory, one should be able to just add instant yeast to a dough without first proofing it in a warm liquid. However, I find this to be iffy on its success rate, and after too many situations where I’ve been driven to the brink by a dough with visible yeast granules in it even after a long rise, I pretty much always give instant yeast a quick warm bath in a small amount of the liquid from a recipe while I pull the rest of my ingredients together. Also, I bake with yeast often enough that I buy it in larger quantities and keep it in the fridge, so this warm soak helps to “wake it up” a bit. So, in nearly every recipe involving yeast in this book, you’ll see I have you dissolve instant yeast in a little liquid first, just to make everything a bit more foolproof.
BUTTER. I use salted butter on my bread like it’s going out of style, but for baking, it’s exclusively unsalted. In the centuries of baking, it’s a relatively new school way of doing things, as most midwestern bakers tend to reach for salted butter, even now. Salted butter means well-preserved butter, and it lasts longer both in storage and on grocery store shelves. To that end, unsalted butter will be a fresher product. Additionally, the balance of salty and sweet is very important in great baked goods, and if you use salted butter and don’t adjust the salt in these recipes, you’ll end up with an oversalted product. Best just to use unsalted and avoid the guesswork.
You’ll also notice several recipes calling for European-style butter, which has a slightly higher butterfat content than American butters, and can make a big difference in recipes deserving a bold, buttery flavor. When I need the extra richness from a European-style butter, I most often use Kerrygold, Plugra, or look for small-batch butters from local farms with a butterfat percentage of at least 82 percent. It’s a little more spendy, but the flavor and texture payoff is worth it when it’s called for. Cultured butter is also a fun thing to try for butter-forward baked goods to give a little edge. Regular unsalted butter can be substituted in the same amounts without the recipe failing, it just may not sing in exactly the same way.
HEAVY WHIPPING CREAM. There’s plenty in these pages, in both whipped and liquid form. Make sure you are getting “heavy whipping cream” and not plain “whipping cream” or “light cream,” which are lower in milkfat and don’t behave the same way in recipes.
MILK. Again, with the full-fat! I always use whole for baking, low-fat for drinking. If a recipe just needs a little moisture and the amount is in tablespoons, such as to thin a mixture slightly or make an egg wash, low-fat is fine. But you will taste and see the difference when you use larger amounts in batters and doughs.
BUTTERMILK. This one can be low-fat. (Somewhere a nutritionist is exhaling.) Just make sure you shake it well every time you use it and don’t heat it on its own or it will separate.
EGGS. Large eggs only, in the neighborhood of 50 grams per whole egg. If you need only the whites or the yolks for a recipe, store the remainder in the fridge for two or three days, tops. (Egg whites can be frozen individually in ice cubes trays, popped out, and stored in freezer bags for up to a year. I’m not a fan of freezing yolks, as they become oddly gelatinous unless you add sugar or salt, and even that isn’t foolproof.) Save frustration and trying to remember how many whites or yolks you’ve stored by weighing out what you need for your next recipe. Whites weigh approximately 30 grams each; the yolks, 20 grams.
WHITE GRANULATED SUGAR. The controversial queen of the larder. I like pure cane like Domino or C&H and usually weigh it—200 grams per cup.
LIGHT AND DARK BROWN SUGARS. Light brown sugar is a key ingredient in midwestern baking. Forever it seemed, I was a dark brown sugar devotee for flavor and color. And I still love it. But what I’ve learned is if the Midwest had a flavor, it would likely be the combination of butter and light brown sugar. Light brown sugar whispers instead of shouting, and still lends moisture and chew. Dark brown is great when you really need to punch up depth in some way. In extreme cases, such as for gingerbread-y things, I sometimes go even further and look for dark muscovado sugar. Measure these moist sugars by packing them firmly into your measuring cup, or even better, weigh them, too—225 grams per cup.
CONFECTIONERS’ SUGAR. Nothing adds the pretty or conceals flaws like a dusting of this stuff. Sometimes you need it for frostings, sometimes for making doughs meltingly tender. Either way, its super annoying to be out of it, so I make it a staple. Spoon it into your measuring cup and level it off like flour, or weigh it at 120 grams per cup.
CORN SYRUP. Not many appearances in this book and not in great volume, but where it shows up, it’s essential for texture, even if you just need a spoonful. Light is more versatile, and it keeps forever.
FINE SEA SALT. My salt preference for baking. It dissolves easily and has a clean flavor, especially great for recipes where you really want that crave-worthy sweet-salty thing happening and the salt really needs to sing. It tends to come in boxes or in taller, narrower canisters than iodized. I even find it at the dollar store sometimes. Fine sea salt has a level of saltiness somewhere between regular iodized table salt and Diamond Crystal brand kosher salt (Morton brand kosher salt is coarser, denser, and the saltiest of them all, so I avoid it). So if you only have table salt, use scant measurements of what’s called for. For Diamond Crystal, use a slightly rounded measurement.
FLAKY SEA SALT. The crown jewel of salts. I typically reach for Maldon brand, which is readily available. Can be used as a finishing salt sprinkled over the tops of cookies, bars, savory baked goods, and more. Flaky sea salt mixed into a cookie dough adds marvelous little surprise sparks of salt throughout, often combined with a light backdrop of fine sea salt (as in the Caramel Canvas Blondies here). It’s an easy way to bring a simple, old-school recipe up to modern tastes.
VANILLA. I reach for pure vanilla extract for almost every recipe, and keep a jar of pure vanilla bean paste for when I want both vanilla flavor and the aesthetic of vanilla bean flecks in a light-colored frosting, filling, or ice cream without having to scrape beans.
SPICES. I have a fairly standard spice selection, but there are a few I upgrade for a little extra ka-pow in my baking. First is Vietnamese cinnamon, also labeled Saigon cinnamon. It tastes like Red Hots cinnamon candy and is a world away from the dusty stuff we grew up with. Same goes for using whole nutmeg, freshly grated with a Microplane, over preground. Chinese five-spice powder makes a few appearances, and its zippy character helps to elevate things that might only use, say, cinnamon, and is revelatory in fruit desserts, especially apples, pears, cherries, and other stone fruits, making people ask, “What’s in this?!” (in a good way).
CITRUS ZEST. Finely grated with a Microplane. I’m happiest when I can get organic, unwaxed citrus fruits so I don’t have to worry about scrubbing like crazy to avoid sprinkling pesticides into my efforts.
CHOCOLATE. I most often reach for 60% bittersweet chocolate, either in bar form or chips. I also have a bar or two of extra bittersweet chocolate, something in the neighborhood of 75%, when a really sweet base needs bitter contrast. Changing up the chocolate in a recipe, both in quality and cacao percentage, is the easiest way to modernize the flavor of a recipe and give it a little edge. High-quality semisweet is used here and there in this book, and even some milk chocolate, too, which, if we’re being honest and not food snobs, is basically life-giving when it comes to eating straight up.
BLACK COCOA POWDER. This ultradark, insanely intense cocoa is the key player when I want to take a recipe running on cocoa powder to the next level (such as the Wednesday Night Brownies here). I consider this cocoa to be “Oreo” flavored. I rarely swap out all the cocoa in a recipe for black cocoa, as a little of this—like just a couple tablespoons exchanged—goes a long way. Black cocoa is Dutch-processed, so keep that in mind when using it in a recipe.
NUTS. Other than sliced and slivered blanched almonds, I almost always buy nuts whole and raw. That way, I can transform them into whatever I need for a recipe—toasted or not, chopped or ground. Much more versatile and cost-effective.