If you’re someone passionate about their baking from mixing to munching, there are a few essentials you should have in your kitchen. These indispensable implements will make doing what you love to do so much easier. They will also help you create consistently delicious and beautiful baked goods, something crucial to any baker.
Measuring Cups and Spoons
Having a set of metal measuring cups and spoons suitable for dry ingredients or liquids is crucial to anyone moderately serious about the act of creation in the kitchen. While cooking can be a more relaxed process when it comes to measures, your results from the oven often rely on exact chemical processes. Hence, exactitude is important when combining your raw materials, especially if you are trying a new recipe for the first time.
Wire Racks
Those who bake on a serious scale know that you can never have too many cooling racks. Especially if you like to bake eight-dozen cookies or five-layer cakes, having enough sturdy wire cooling racks is imperative. These should be made of quality stainless steel mesh with feet on the bottom. Feet elevate the rack off the countertop and permit the free circulation of air beneath the hot pans, facilitating even cooling of your baked goodies. Wire racks will let the product cool much more easily than cooling it on a towel or in the pan.
A Good Mixer
It may seem romantic to mix by hand your Great Aunt Amelia’s lemon pound cake recipe, but after you apply ice and pressure to that fatigue strained upper arm, you’ll understand why serious bakers consider a KitchenAid professional series stand mixer an essential. Because these mixers are intended to last, they are one of the big appliance investments. It’s often more cost effective to purchase replacement parts when they do wear out, rather than tossing the whole mixer. It’s easy to find replacement parts at places like Mendingshed.com, so that you can keep your mixer working longer.
Rubber Spatulas
These are indispensable kitchen tools for anyone. You’ll want to purchase several heat-resistant rubber spatulas, the heads of which are not separate from the handle. Food can become lodged in the division between handle and head, leading to serious contamination issues. Different sizes of spatulas makes work easier. You can use a large one to scrape a mixing bowl or a small one to scrape the last peanut butter out of the jar. Having a good set of rubber spatulas is essential and they will need to be replaced more often than other kitchen tools.
Bench Scraper
This multi-purpose tool is perfect for loosening dough from any surface, scoring cookies, or transferring chopped ingredients from board to bowl. It makes the transfer process much quicker and less messy.
A Good Set of Pans
Pans are one of the number one tools that people use to bake goodies. A cheap pan may get you a cake, but it might not come out easily or cook evenly. Investing in a good set of non-stick pans is essential to having your cakes and cookies turn out just the way you would like them to. Having a variety of shapes, sizes and finishes also helps since some desserts are best with either light or dark colored pans to control cooking.
Baking can be a wonderful way to unwind on the weekends or a professional career. But whether you’re simply exploring the joys of sweet creation or running a thriving business from your home, these five implements are essential for easy prep and presentation. As all good bakers know, just because something is simple doesn’t mean it’s dispensable.