#bakingsecrets

Self-raising flour is a type of flour that already contains a leavening agent, usually baking powder, which helps baked goods rise. Heat-treating self-raising flour is not recommended because it can potentially affect the effectiveness of the leavening agent.

When self-raising flour is heat-treated, the baking powder in it may lose its potency. Heat can cause the chemical reactions within the baking powder to occur prematurely, leading to a diminished leavening effect in your baked goods.

If you require heat-treated flour for a specific recipe or purpose, it's generally better to start with all-purpose flour and then add the necessary leavening agents, such as baking powder or baking soda, according to the recipe's instructions. This allows you to have better control over the leavening process and ensures that your baked goods rise properly.

Who knew that flour had proteins?

Have I been hiding under a rock or is this something that the everyday person knows? Glutenin and gliadin are the two proteins that are in flour and when these proteins combine with water you get... tadaaa! GLUTEN! It’s almost like a magic trick, the gluten magically appears with the addition of water. And the protein levels in flour is never the same. What does this mean exactly? Well it means that if you have a low protein flour, your recipe will be slightly off when baking your desserts because the dough will not stick to itself in that doughy fashion. How can you solve this low protein problem? Simple, just add more flour.

Do egg yolks and egg whites work better together or apart?

Often we hear how much better egg whites are for you because they don’t carry all of the “fat” that is in the yolk. So if we only put egg whites into our cookies, does that make them just a little bit healthier with the same great taste? Unfortunately no, to both questions. Too much egg whites leaves your desserts dry and too much egg whites will rise more than average. Leaving out the egg yolk leaves out the moisture, but too much egg yolk will make your dessert so moist, it may not seem cooked when you eat it.

Here’ another fact: Taking your eggs right out of your fridge and cracking them into your mixing bowls means your sugar and eggs won’t work together as well as if the eggs were at room temperature. Getting your eggs to reach room temperature by just sitting them on the counter may take about around thirty minutes. An alternative is to put them in a bowl, with the shell on of course, with warm water for about five minutes.

What butter is good butter?

I’m sure that when you read the recipe for those cookies you made a few months back you saw something similar to “1/2 cup of butter (softened)”. Well, if you are like me, your eyes probably didn’t pay attention to the “softened” part and just grabbed a stick of butter from the fridge and plopped it right into your mixing bowl. The problem with that? Well for one thing if you ever used a hand mixer on a cold stick of butter you know it does not blend well and won’t go to a creamy state. This means that again, your ingredients do not combine correctly and your desserts won’t rise like they should.

So when you do actually soften your butter before throwing it in that bowl, here are some things to look for:

The butter is dense with no air bubbles

It is not lumpy, sticky or brittle

There is no sweating

This page gives more information about butter and how to convert between salted and unsalted butter and other fun facts about butter that no one really knows about.

So now that you know all these helpful tips about baking...