Techniques

Mixing

Where most of a bake is actually decided. Creaming, rubbing in, folding and whisking are four different ways of getting air and fat where they need to be, and choosing the wrong one is not recoverable later.

• Autolyse

  Resting flour and water together before adding salt and leaven, allowing hydration and enzyme activity to begin development without work.

  intermediate

• Creaming

  Beating solid fat with sugar to force air into the fat, creating the gas cells a chemical leavener will later expand.

  beginner

• Rubbing in

  Working cold fat into flour with the fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs, coating the flour so gluten cannot fully form.

  beginner

• Folding

  Combining a light aerated mixture with a heavier one while destroying as little of the aeration as possible.

  intermediate

• Whisking to a foam

  Beating air into a liquid protein so it forms a stable foam — and the narrow window between not enough and too far.

  intermediate

• Lining a tin

  Preparing a tin so the bake releases intact — a preparation step whose failure is discovered only when it is too late to fix.

  beginner

• Softening butter

  Bringing butter to the plastic state that creaming depends on — a temperature range, not a step to be rushed with heat.

  beginner

Developing the dough

Building a gluten network, or deliberately not. Both are techniques; the difference between kneading and handling gently is the difference between bread and pastry.

• Kneading

  Working a dough mechanically to develop its gluten network into something elastic, extensible and able to hold gas.

  beginner

• Stretch and fold

  Developing a dough during bulk fermentation by stretching and folding it at intervals, instead of kneading it all at once.

  intermediate

Fermenting

The stage no clock can describe, because the same dough ferments at different speeds in different kitchens. What to observe matters more here than anywhere else on the site.

• Bulk fermentation

  The first fermentation, with the dough in one mass, where most flavour and most structural change happen.

  intermediate

• Proofing

  The final rise, after shaping and before the oven — the stage most faults are decided at, and the one most often judged by a clock.

  beginner

Shaping

Tension, structure and the gas you keep. Shaping looks cosmetic and is the reason two loaves from one batch can rise differently.

• Lamination

  Rolling and folding a dough around a sheet of fat to build alternating layers, which steam from the dough forces apart in the oven because the fat will not let it through.

  advanced

• Shaping

  Building tension into the surface of a dough so it holds its form and rises upward rather than spreading outward.

  intermediate

• Scoring

  Cutting the surface of a proofed loaf so it opens where the baker chooses rather than bursting where the crust happens to be weakest.

  intermediate

Baking

Steam, heat direction and knowing when to stop. The oven stage is short, mostly irreversible, and the one where a thermometer beats a timer.

• Blind baking

  Baking a pastry case before its filling, weighted so the base does not lift and the sides do not slump.

  intermediate

• Water bath

  Surrounding a mould with hot water so the mixture cannot exceed the boiling point of water — a temperature limiter rather than a cooking method.

  intermediate

Where to go next

• When a technique did not work

  Diagnosis by what you can observe, and most of it points back at one of the stages above.

• Why the technique works

  The mechanism each of these is manipulating, with what is settled kept apart from what is not.

• What you actually need

  Every equipment page states what works instead of it, because the honest answer is usually that something cheaper does most of the job.