For Your Table

From scratch

A few tips to help every baker have success in the kitchen

by David Tamarkin

There are no bad bakers—just uninformed ones. We know this, because at King Arthur Baking Company’s Baking School we’ve been teaching beginner and advanced bakers for more than 20 years, and we’ve seen countless “bad bakers” transform into (almost) pros after just one class. Our new cookbook, Baking School: Lessons and Recipes for Every Baker, provides transformative tips that make bakers better. Here are a few of them.

Nail your butter temp

Room temperature butter is key to the success of every bake. If your cake or cookie recipe calls for creaming butter with sugar, the butter needs to be at room temperature—no cooler and no warmer. Here’s a test to judge your butter’s temp: Press a clean finger onto the surface; it should leave an indentation. If it doesn’t, the butter is too cold. If your finger sinks into the butter or the butter is glossy, it’s a little too warm.

For better pies, chill

One of the most frustrating fails bakers experience is a pie crust that shrinks and loses its shape in the oven. To prevent this, give your assembled pie a rest in the fridge for 15 to 30 minutes (the closer to 30 minutes, the better). Chilled and rested pie dough will keep its shape and definition better.

Wake up your starter with rye

Sourdough bakers tend to their starters like children, feeding them regularly and making sure they’re as bubbly and healthy as possible. When a starter shows signs of getting weak—it happens to everybody—feeding the starter with whole-grain rye flour can help rev it up. Whole-grain flours accelerate fermentation and will have the starter back in fighting shape in a few days, after which you can go back to feeding it with white flour.

Get a better biscuit rise

Biscuits are generally considered an easy bake for beginners, and they are! (They’re also a fun bake to make with kids.) But it can be a little tricky to get biscuits that rise high and flaky. One of the most common problems is that people pat their biscuit dough too thin, thinking the biscuits will rise dramatically in the oven. The truth is, biscuits rise only about half their height. So, if you want tall biscuits, start with tall dough!

Measure by weight

So many folks who think they’re unsuccessful bakers are simply imprecise measurers. That’s not their fault: Measuring by volume—that is, using measuring cups—is notoriously imprecise. On the flip side, using a digital scale and measuring by weight is as precise as it gets, and comes with the added benefit of being easier and requiring less cleanup. When you measure by weight, you add the exact right amount of flour, sugar, milk, etc., and your baking automatically improves. For an example, see the Buttermilk Biscuits recipe, below.

See? It wasn’t you after all.