Baking Science
Baker's percentages let you rescale, compare and diagnose any recipe
Expressing everything against the flour weight turns a list of ingredients into a description of a dough that you can reason about.
Gaurav Bhattacharya
Contributing writer, Bakemens
Gaurav writes about equipment and has opinions about domestic oven thermostats.
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17 articles
Baking Science
Altitude changes every leavened recipe, and pressure is the reason
Lower air pressure means gas expands more freely and water boils cooler. Both effects work against a rising batter at the same time.
Baking Science
Amylase, falling number and why bakers add malt to flour
Flour contains enzymes that convert starch into sugar. Too little and the loaf bakes pale and rises poorly; too much and the crumb…
Tins & Tools
A set of one gram scales is the cheapest upgrade in the kitchen
Volume measures for flour vary by twenty per cent or more depending on how the cup was filled, which is enough to change a recipe…
Tins & Tools
Your oven dial is a suggestion and a cheap thermometer proves it
Domestic ovens routinely run twenty degrees away from their setting and swing thirty degrees either side of it as the thermostat…
Tins & Tools
Fan or conventional: the twenty degree rule and when it misleads
A fan moves hot air across the food, which transfers heat far faster than still air. Dropping the temperature compensates for the…
Tins & Tools
A baking steel or stone is thermal mass, and that is the whole benefit
The stone does not cook differently. It stores a large amount of heat and dumps it into the base of whatever you put on it faster…
Tins & Tools
Stand mixer, hand mixer or hands: what each is actually good at
The three tools are not ranked. Each does one part of baking better than the others, and knowing which is which saves both money…
Tins & Tools
A lidded cast iron pot is the best steam device most kitchens already own
It works because it traps the loaf's own moisture in a small volume, which no amount of water thrown into a vented domestic oven…
Tins & Tools
Controlling dough temperature without buying a proving cabinet
Fermentation is a temperature problem, and every solution to it is really just a way of holding a small volume of air steady for a…
Baking Science
Conduction, convection and radiation each bake a different part of the loaf
An oven delivers heat in three ways at once, and knowing which one is reaching which surface explains most uneven bakes.
Baking Science
Milk does four things in a dough that plain water cannot
Swapping water for milk is treated as a small enrichment, and it changes browning, crumb, keeping and how fast the dough ferments…
Tins & Tools
A banneton shapes nothing, it just holds a shape while gravity argues
The basket is often blamed for a flat loaf and credited for a good one, and neither is fair to a piece of equipment that only…
Tins & Tools
Tapered, straight and heavy rolling pins are three different tools
The choice is usually made on what was in the drawer, and each design changes how evenly pressure reaches the dough beneath it.
Tins & Tools
A warped thin tray is why one side of the batch browns first
Baking sheets are treated as interchangeable, and their thickness, colour and flatness decide how heat reaches whatever is sitting…
Tins & Tools
Piping is a temperature problem before it is a technique problem
Most piping failures are blamed on unsteady hands, and they are usually a filling that was too warm, too cold or too stiff for the…
Tins & Tools
A food processor makes better shortcrust and worse bread
The machine is superb at one baking task and actively harmful at another, and the difference is what a spinning blade does to fat…