Bread
Bulk fermentation ends when the dough says so, not when the timer does
Almost every dense loaf and every collapsed one traces back to the same decision, made by a clock that knew nothing about your…
Moushumi Ghosh
Editor, Bakemens
Moushumi edits Bakemens and has weighed every ingredient she has used since 2016.
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42 articles
Bread
Steam in the first ten minutes decides how high the loaf can go
A dry oven sets the crust within four or five minutes and locks the loaf at whatever size it happened to be. Steam delays that by…
Bread
A sourdough starter is a stable ecosystem, not a temperamental pet
Once established, a starter is a competitive environment that keeps itself safe. Most of the anxiety around it comes from treating…
Pastry
Choux is cooked twice and the first cook is the one people rush
Drying the paste on the hob before the eggs go in decides how much egg it can absorb, and that decides how high the buns rise.
Pastry
Hot water crust does the opposite of everything shortcrust wants
Boiling water, melted fat and warm handling would ruin a tart case. Here they produce a pastry strong enough to stand up on its own…
Pastry
Sweet pastry is fragile because sugar and yolk are working against the flour
Pâte sucrée tears, cracks and crumbles during handling, and every one of those behaviours is a direct consequence of what makes it…
Baking Science
The Maillard reaction needs heat, protein and a surface that has dried
Browning is not just cooking for longer. It requires a specific combination of conditions, and a wet surface will never produce it…
Baking Science
Fat tenderises because it interrupts, not because it lubricates
Butter in a cake does not make the crumb slippery. It gets between flour proteins and starch and physically stops them building a…
Baking Science
Why bread goes stale fastest in the fridge
Staling is not drying out. It is starch recrystallising, and that process has a temperature preference that puts the fridge at…
Tins & Tools
Tin material and colour change the bake more than the recipe admits
Dark steel, shiny aluminium, glass and ceramic transfer heat at very different rates, and the same batter in each comes out visibly…
Tins & Tools
Tin volume, not tin diameter, is what you scale a recipe by
Moving from a 20cm round to a 23cm round is not a small change. The area grows by a third, and the batter depth changes everything…
Tins & Tools
A probe thermometer removes the biggest guess in baking
Doneness is a temperature event, and almost every other test is an indirect proxy for it. A twenty second measurement replaces all…
Tins & Tools
Parchment, silicone mats and greasing: which surface for which bake
The lining is not just about release. It changes how much heat reaches the base and how much the item spreads while it bakes.
Tins & Tools
The five small tools that change bread more than any appliance
A bench scraper, a blade, a banneton, a scale and a probe cost less between them than one mixer, and each removes a specific…
When It Goes Wrong
A sunken middle is usually underbaking, whatever the internet tells you
Overmixing gets blamed for the crater in the centre of a cake, but the far more common cause is a structure that never finished…
When It Goes Wrong
Butter pooling under your croissants means the layers broke, and you can find where
A little fat on the tray is normal and produces the fried base. A pool with pale, greasy pastry sitting in it means the lamination…
When It Goes Wrong
That dense wet layer at the bottom of your cake has a specific cause
A distinct band of heavy, damp crumb across the base is not general underbaking. Something separated and sank before the structure…
When It Goes Wrong
Tunnels and holes in a muffin come from mixing, not from the oven
Long vertical channels running up through the crumb are a signature of overdeveloped gluten combined with a hot bake, and they are…
When It Goes Wrong
Your loaf burst at the side because the crust set before it finished rising
A tear along the base or the shoulder rather than an opening at the score is one of the most legible faults in bread, and it points…
When It Goes Wrong
Shortcrust that shrinks down the tin is telling you about gluten
Pastry walls that slump into a shallow crater during blind baking were stretched, not laid, and the gluten in them is simply…
When It Goes Wrong
A sharp alcoholic smell means the dough went past its useful point
Overfermentation announces itself before you ever cut the loaf, and recognising the signs early is the difference between adjusting…
When It Goes Wrong
Cookies that spread into one sheet: fat, sugar, flour or heat
Spread is a race between the dough softening and the structure setting. Four variables decide which wins, and each leaves a…
When It Goes Wrong
A gummy crumb after cooling means the loaf was never actually finished
Bread that feels sticky and clay-like when cut has usually been pulled early, cut early, or made with a flour whose enzymes ran…
Bread
Bran is a blade, which is why wholemeal loaves sit lower
The same recipe made with wholemeal flour rises less and feels heavier, and the reason is physical damage to a network that formed…
Cakes & Sponges
Natural and alkalised cocoa are not the same ingredient
The two tins look identical on the shelf and behave differently in the bowl, because one of them is acidic and the other has had…
Cakes & Sponges
A heavy fruit cake needs a slow oven and a lined tin for the same reason
Both are answers to one problem, which is that the outside of a dense cake reaches setting temperature long before the middle knows…
Pastry
Flaky and short are opposite textures built from the same three ingredients
Flour, fat and water make both, and the only real difference is how large the pieces of fat were when the water arrived.
Pastry
The liquid in pastry is a compromise you make on purpose
Water is what turns crumbs into a dough and also what turns a tender crust into a leathery one, which is why pastry recipes are so…
Baking Science
Every rise is air, steam or carbon dioxide, and most bakes use all three
Sorting leavening into three physical gases rather than into ingredients explains why one bake needs beating and another needs a…
Baking Science
Water activity, not moisture, decides how long a bake keeps
Two cakes with the same amount of water can behave completely differently in the tin, because what matters is how much of that…
Baking Science
Freezing dough and batter damages different things in each
The freezer is the most useful piece of baking equipment nobody thinks about, and knowing what it harms is what makes it reliable.
Baking Science
Aromatics are volatile, so the oven takes back part of what you added
Vanilla, spices, zest and extracts all lose something to heat, and where you add them in the method decides how much of them…
Tins & Tools
Find your oven's hot corner before you blame the recipe
Ovens are not uniform boxes, and the difference between one shelf and another can be larger than the difference between two recipes.
Tins & Tools
A lame, a razor and a kitchen knife cut dough differently because of drag
The cut you make in a proved loaf is a race between the blade and the dough's tendency to stick to it, and thickness is what…
Tins & Tools
A straight-sided tub turns fermentation into something you can measure
Judging rise in a round bowl is guesswork, because the volume near the top is far greater than the volume at the bottom.
Tins & Tools
Springform, loose-bottomed and bundt tins each fail in their own way
Specialist tins exist because some cakes cannot be turned out of a solid tin, and every one of those designs trades a solved…
When It Goes Wrong
A loaf that will not brown has run out of sugar
Pale crusts are usually blamed on the oven, and the more common explanation is that fermentation consumed the sugars that browning…
When It Goes Wrong
Weeping and beading are two different meringue failures
Liquid under a meringue and syrupy droplets on top look like the same problem, and they come from opposite ends of the bake.
When It Goes Wrong
Split buttercream is a temperature problem you can fix in the bowl
A curdled, soupy or grainy buttercream almost never needs throwing away, because in most cases the ingredients are right and only…
When It Goes Wrong
A crust like armour comes from the last third of the bake
Thick, hard crusts are usually blamed on the oven being too hot, and the more common cause is a long bake in dry air after the loaf…
When It Goes Wrong
A cave under the crust means the shaping trapped a bubble
Cutting into a loaf and finding a long empty space beneath the top crust is a shaping fault with a specific cause and an easy…
When It Goes Wrong
Cookies that come out cakey instead of chewy have too much structure
The same dough can bake thin and chewy or high and soft, and the difference sits in flour, egg, sugar and how much air went in…