For a better baking experience: Prepare and repair

I just made the Low-Carb Carrot Cake from ditchthecarbs.com. I used Xylitol as sweetener, added another tsp of vanilla (because that's almost always a good idea), and used a heaping tablespoon of "Mickey's Five-spice" instead of the other spices. The batter was quite satisfying and not very sweet, but the cream cheese frosting part of the recipe is all manner of wrong. The carb/protein ratio is really good, we could use 50/50 whole-wheat and almond flour and still be balanced. Let's see the results:


It set fine, but was somewhat dense and dry, falling apart too easily. It was not very sweet at all, possibly due to using a sweetener with a different amount of sweetening power

But what I really want to write about is the process, and how this was the most stress-free baking experience ever. I think of it as "prepare and repair". The "prepare" part is also beautifully known as "mise en place" ([mi zɑ̃ ˈplas]) and basically means to have all the ingredients out and ready before starting to prepare anything. "Repair" refers to cleaning up as you go or immediately after work stops. While I didn't strictly follow this slightly more specific method (I started to melt the butter before everything was out), here's my approach:

  1. Read the recipe carefully. Some recipes have traps like heating the oven when the dough needs half an hour of resting, take unexpectedly long, or have special tool requirements. Running out of time or tools halfway through is no fun. I've been bad about that in the past.
  2. Take all ingredients out of storage and place them at the working surface, making sure there is enough of each ingredient. This step eliminates a common failure mode of mine: Not realizing that I'm missing some crucial ingredient until I'm halfway through the receipt. 
  3. Prepare oven/containers. Greasing baking pans shouldn't wait until the last minute. The oven takes time to heat up. But don't heat it up early if the dough will rest for a long time.
  4. Chop/grate/melt etc. ingredients. Except a few cases like apples where extended oxidation is a bad idea, this separates two very distinct modes of work. It also means that if for some reason you have to abort early, these ingredients can probably be saved for later.
  5. Combine ingredients. This is now often a trivial task, or if the recipe is tricky, a much easier task for not being intertwined with finding or processing ingredients.
  6. Pour into containers & bake. Enjoy the smell and get high on anticipatory dopamins!
  7. Clean up. This is the "repair" part, where the messy kitchen gets fixed back to a nice state. Put all ingredient containers away, either wash or at least rinse and place together all the dirty tools, and wipe down the surfaces. It doesn't take long, but makes a huge difference in how it feels to be in the kitchen.

Comments

  1. Pam23 March 2018 at 22:57

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pam23 March 2018 at 22:58

    In addition to taking everything out at the start, I put each ingredient container away as it's used. That way it's more obvious if I've completely forgotten to add something -- hey, why is the cinnamon still sitting here when I thought I was done mixing? -- plus it starts a little on the cleanup.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Ikea Hack Workbench

Image
I needed a new workbench. One where my printer could live, where tools and spare parts could be organized, but also where the work surface wouldn't get cluttered or take too much of the space in my room. I started looking around at secretaries and similar, which have the right concept, but never the right size. Eventually I realized I had to do it myself. These are my notes. I used an IKEA Hemnes side table, two Hemnes night stands, and the top part of the two-part Hemnes writing desk. The two night stands on top of the side table, and the writing desk part on top of them, like the cross slab of a megalith, done in wood plank furniture. That part was simple enough, except I didn't want the gaps under the night stands, so I cut a bit of the logs, but cut too much, so now I need to fill some gaps. I'll probably print something eventually. But here's the basic setup: Hemnes, Hemnes everywhere. But they are clearly not designed to go together like these, the sizes don...
Read more

Bullet Journals Without the Pastels

Image
Late last year,  +Riona MacNamara  introduced me to the idea of  bullet journals , and I decided to give it a try over Christmas. It worked out for me and has seriously helped me getting shit done, without a snowfall of post-it notes to keep track of things (I have graphs and data to back this claim up, see the Statistics section). There are  many   pages   describing   bullet   journals , most of them showing intricately decorated journals done in pastels. If you're allergic to pastels, or don't have time to decorate your planner, here's my explanation. Guaranteed no florals - hell, I can't even do a straight line. Task Tracking Here are the three parts of my bullet journal I use the most, the task tracking parts. It has three levels: generic future tasks roughly by month, tasks for the current month, and tasks for today. The  future tracker  is where you keep tasks that you want to get around to eventually, but either don't have t...
Read more

Almond flour isn't just almond flour

Image
Looking around on the internet for how much almond flour to use instead of regular flour, I kept finding big variations, from 1:1 replacement to 1:2. Since baking is fairly finicky with the amount of ingredients, this confused me. But when I grabbed an extra bag of almond flour at the local grocery store (yes, there are specialty flours at the grocery store here), I noticed a difference in consistency and decided to take a closer look. Here's a close-up of the two flours using a macro lens. On the left is MeaVita Mandelmehl, on the right Borchers Premium Mandelmehl. In both cases, I've used a blunt instrument to gently distribute the flour to better see the difference. The flour on the left, the MeaVita brand flour, is in much larger chunks than on the right. The MeaVita flour also feels more moist, though I don't know if that's a direct effect of the size or because more oil has been extracted from the Borchers flour. It is, however, obvious that the two flour...
Read more