Hmm. "... become a better baker"? Or, "... to bake better?" Tools and gadgets do not the baker make.
4
I love my silicone pan for brownies and cakes. It cooks evenly, and it’s always easy to remove Cooked item from the pan.
Also silicone baking sheets work as well or better than parchment paper and are reusable.
And finely I love my silicone spatula’s which include a stiff one, a flexible one and a spoon one.
The article claims that you need an oven thermometer to know if your oven is lying to you. You actually need at least two. Otherwise you'll never know if your oven is wrong or if oven thermometer #1 is. A second oven thermometer (i.e., a third data point) confirms the accuracy of one of the other data points.
6
If you're baking cakes, cookies, whatever sweet things, one of the most important things you can do is to weigh, and properly measure your ingredients.
This doesn't ,matter when you're roasting meat, making a casserole - whatever - but baking cakes or cookies requires precision.
I can't say the number of times I've given a special tea cake recipe to friends, and they come back later and say, ' It didn't turn out like yours'.
I always ask ' Did you properly measure the ingredients, and check the oven temperature?' The answer is always No.
11
It's nice to have "curated" kitchen tools, often found in the finer shops by the village green (or Amazon), but what about the kitchen tools that are usually found at Walmart ? - most of us live close to one. Why not take a hike and "curate" their selection??? just an idea
9
The best sheet pan? Chicago Metallic, hands down. I never have to grease a pan or use parchment.
3
Here’s a free tip for being a better baker: ignore the suggested article linked at the bottom to get your kids a “pet” chicken. According to this article published in this very same NYTimes, from just over six months ago,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/health/backyard-chickens-carry-a-hidd...
the CDC has identified a huge rise in salmonella cases from people treating chickens as pets.
Chickens are not pets!
4
I bake a lot and believe that less is more. I don't think you need expensive gadgets like scale and thermometer to have good or consistent results (they can make baking more stressful because they make it harder to develop inner baking intuition and wisdom). Instead, I would recommend that you keep notes on your favorite recipes and that you learn through observation and experimentation. If you have to buy something, get one of those silicon baking mats - they last forever and help avoid the need for parchment paper.
11
Check out Joy of baking, on Youtube. I've learned a lot from watching this lady,Stephanie Jaworski.She's very easy to watch and a good teacher.
No, I'm not in any way associated with her, I just love her videos.
2
Great list!
2
One more thing to add to this list that I have found to be indispensible: Slipat baking liner. It's a silicone liner for the all-important baking sheet (@tom below is correct about going to commercial restaurant store for one of those) and is re-usable unlike the parchment paper. The parchment paper is also good to have around for the freezing aspect as well as having an extra place to stage the second round to go in the oven, but for the cooking stage, the slipat (or similar) is the way to go!
17
I have air-cushioned cookie sheets that are 15 years old. I'll never give them up. It's literally impossible to burn the bottoms of cookies using them. On the occasions that I over-bake, cookies just get hard, but never burned.
2
Gourmet parchment paper? Should I fret about my aluminum foil?
4
And a ninth: firebrick. Get them at the home improvement store for about $5 each. Get six or even eight depending on the size of your oven. Well heated prior to your bake, these will provide rock-steady heat from underneath your bread pan, cookie sheet, whatever. Wonderful for crust on artisan breads.
Back to eight: lose the measuring cups and do ALL your baking by ratio. Needless to say, measure everything in grams, where ratios are a snap.
12
Buy your parchment paper at Sam’s or Costco. Very cost effective I use it for a variety of things when cooking helps with clean up. Use it when baking till it starts to fall apart as the bakers at King Arthur Flour do.
9
I love to read these things but they never fail to lead me to what was available when many recipes were conceived.
I often think of the rich and ancient culinary tradition of bread which in many parts of the world is still baked in an open uncontrolled clay oven.
And the French who made miraculous things even that we still pursue today at a time when electricity hadn't even arrived.
If you really want to bake the five things you should remember are measure, know why you adding what you are adding, pay attention to the way things look and feel, watch carefully while cooking and choose the best ingredients you can afford.
Pans, parchment paper, thermometers... they're just icing. They aren't the cake, if you'll forgive the metaphor.
28
Great advice and list of must-haves for bakers. The kitchen scale I bought inexpensively on Amazon was the absolute best baking investment ever. And it is so much more accurate and easier than measuring. Many beginning bakers don’t realize you have to stir the flour up with a whisk first and spoon gently into the measuring cup to get an accurate cup—the scale eliminaties that.
King Arthur Flour has a measurement equivalent chart that translates volume measurements to ounces or grams. They also have a handy feature in recipes that automatically converts ingredient measurements.
Two other things I highly recommend for bakers: an inexpensive baking stone (I found one at Aldi) or large cast iron skillet for baking pizza & bread. And a sieve for sifting flour—much easier to use than the sifters with handles.
7
Very tired of how the NY Times feeds the maw of Amazon and Jeff Bezos. I decided quite a while ago, if it's only available on Amazon, I can live without it. Please link to other retail web sites, even if it takes a little extra effort. Isn't that what you're there for?
52
Great list. For cake bakers, to the list I would also add having a set each of 8- and 9-inch round cake pans and a type of tube pan. When one or the other sized round cake pans is specified in a recipe, they usually are not interchangeable since the 9-inch is approx 25% larger than the 8-inch. One could increase the recipe of the 8-inch by 25% to use the 9-inch, or fill the 8-inch only 2/3 full with the batter for the 9-inch recipe (to avoid spillover and under-baking) and use the extra batter for cupcakes. If you must use a different pan than the recipe calls for and don't adjust anything, baking time may need to be adjusted and cakes may be denser, flatter and drier. Also, a 9-inch recipe cake can be baked in an 8-inch square pan.
I would also recommend having an extra set of measuring cups & spoons. I don't, and I dislike having to wash and rewash my measuring utensils during prep because often the ingredients in the same meal and sometimes the same recipe use the same quantities. Having two sets is maybe a bit excessive, but I would much prefer to do clean up while food is baking/cooking and not during prep.
As it did for the Wirecutter reviewers, my Vollrath heavy gauge 1/2 sized baking sheet pan warped the very first time I used it but at a temp of only 350. It's a good, durable pan that I use a lot, but I can't bake anything in it that needs to be level so I use it only for roasting.
4
If you don't roll out dough or make cracker/cookie crumbs very often, an empty champagne bottle works well.
5
I couldn't agree more about baking needing precision so I would add an instant-read temperature probe. Bread that you have to take out of the oven, and then thump for the right sound, is just asking for a disaster. Learn what temp your baked goods should be at to be finished and then stick them with that probe to confirm what your eyes and nose are telling you.
9
Agree on the 5 things but would add three. First, hardly none of the baking sheets sold as consumer goods are worth the money (even the ones mentioned). Find a commercial or restaurant supply store and pay the extra money. Your cookies and other items will thank you. Second, not just an oven thermometer but a thermometer that will measure the temperature before you put in the yeast. More raised goods are failures because of temperature or bad yeast. Third, depending on the brand, ovens may not have a consistent temperature throughout the entire oven (mostly door gasket leakage). Measure the temperature in different parts of the oven and only after the oven is fully warmed.
37
Actually, I have paid less at restaurant supply stores for sheet pans and other sturdy items than I would have at a retail store! Restaurant-quality implements are far sturdier and longer-lasting!
4
Costco has great baking sheets. They also have 1/4 sheet pans.
1