Basic ingredients required for baking and Baking Elements.

Basic ingredients required for baking −

• Flour
• Sugar
• Margarine
• Baking Soda/Powder/Yeast
• Eggs
• Salt
• Milk
• Commodities Used in Baking

 Baking Elements

• Flour − It is the basic ingredient of baking cookies, breads, cakes, muffins, pizzas, tarts, and pastries. Its variants are self-rising flour, wheat flour, all-purpose flour, cake flour, etc.
• Essence − It is an extract acquired from a plant or other matter used for flavoring food. Some typical essence are almond, vanilla, saffron, lemon and rose.
• Margarine or Butter − Margarine is made of refined vegetable oil, water, and milk. Butter is made of processing milk. These both are called shortening.
• Sugar − It is used as food sweetener.
• Eggs − They are used as leavening and binding agents and they can bring moisture in the cakes. The chefs need to add either yogurt or applesauce in eggless cakes.
• Baking Powder/Yeast − It is used as a rising/leavening agent that gives softness and fluffy texture to cakes and breads. The baking powder is white fine powder made of Sodium Bicarbonate, Potassium Bitartrate, and corn starch. The yeast comes in two variants − dry and liquid.
• Cocoa Powder − It is used for introducing chocolate flavor to the food.
• Chocolate slabs − They are used for acquiring flakes by grating and then using the flakes for garnishing and decorating cakes. They come in the variety of chocolate-milk-sugar proportion. Now chocolate drops or chips are also available in the market.
• Fruit Jams − They are used for decorating sweet baked products.
• Milk − It is used for softening batter for the cakes, breads, and cookies.
• Salt − A pinch of salt is added into batter of sweet baked products to balance the taste of Baking powder and sugar.
• Some typical equipment required in baking are −
• Ovens − They are used as a heating chambers for baking. Direct heat large kilns and modern electric ovens are used in food preparation units. The electric ovens provide high degree of precise temperature control and uniform heat.
• Mixing Machine − It is used to mix all bread or cake ingredients together into soft dough or batter.
• Tins − There are tins with various shapes and sizes used in baking. They create the resulting baked product in attractive shapes.
• Icing Bag with Nozzles − The icing bags hold the icing. They are used in decorating cakes in a large variety of ways using nozzles of catchy shapes and widths. They provide a great way of filling small glasses and molds in a sophisticated manner.
• Baking Parchment − It is a cellulose-based paper used as a non-stick surface.
• It is often thin and disposable.
• Knives − Bakery knives are used for cutting loafs, cakes, and handling pieces of cakes.
• Cake Stands − They are required to keep cakes of multiple tiers. Some of them
• are rotary. They provide circular motion that makes the process of cake decoration easy.
• Spatula − They are flat tip spoons, used to fold the batter and fill the icing bag. Spatulas often have rubber tips.
• Basic Bread Fabrication
• Bread fabrication is a complex process. Once started, it cannot be interrupted, as timing is very important for bread making.
• Weighing Ingredients
• During this stage, the chef assembles all the required ingredients and weigh them properly to ensure a good quality final product.
• Preparing Ingredients
• The chef selects an appropriate flour and sieves it. The chef also prepares yeast mixture by adding right amount of water of right temperature into the dry yeast.