Ingredient Function in Baking: Flour, Sugar, Fat and Eggs

Use low protein flour, such as cake flour to make the most tender muffins. flickr

Thanks to Alicia Nijdam

Seems like sugar is such a bad word these days. And honestly, I will not be the one to tell you that sugar is good for you. In the quantities we consume sugar, it is not good for you. Sugar does, however, have some amazing properties that make it vital in the bakeshop. Just remember--everything in moderation. I would recommend a diet of nothing but spinach no more than I would recommend the Tootsie Pop diet. Keep balance in your life, Grasshopper, and all will be well.

Sugar does a number of things in a baked good. It inhibits gluten development, so it adds tenderness. It is hygroscopic (it draws water to it), so it helps keep things moist and fresh. Since sugar caramelizes at 330 degrees, F, it aids in browning. Sugar also makes bakery goodies taste sweet which makes us want to eat them. (Moderation, people).

I will now tell you a Little Story: a friend of mine decided to see what would happen if she tried to make coffee cake without the sugar. Friends, she ended up with a pale, crumbly biscuit which she promptly fed to the birds.

So, what did she learn? Her normally moist and springy cake was pale and hard. The cinnamon flavor wasn't as pronounced because it had no sugar to amplify it. And, here was the biggest surprise--the thing barely rose, even with baking powder.

Here's the "why" on the no-rising: Sugar is one of the two main components in the creaming method, the other being fat. When you cream ingredients, the crystalline structure of the sugar makes thousands of small tears in the cool fat. The tears form little air pockets in the fat. The more you cream (as long as the fat remains cool) the more bubbles you get. More bubbles=more air to expand when heated in the oven (especially when added to the carbon dioxide emitted by the baking powder). More air/carbon dioxide=better rise. No sugar for the creaming step=no tears=no air pocket=dense final product. Don't let this happen to you.

Incidentally, this is why it's hard to find a good substitute for sugar in baking and still have a decent rise.

Biscuits a little pale? Add some sugar to the mix.

Here's some issues that you can fix by adjusting the sugar in your recipe.

Too dry? Try increasing the sugar slightly.
Too tough? Ditto.
Too pale? Ditto.
Too tender? Try decreasing the sugar slightly.
Too dark? Ditto.
Too moist? Ditto.

In the US, a biscuit is a type of quick bread. Use a low-protein flour for these--a light All Purpose flour or cake flour. The bisuits are leavened with baking powder, which has a neutral pH. The liquid is milk or cream. If you'd like to use half buttermilk and half cream, add about 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda per half cup (4 ounces) of buttermilk to balance out the formula.

Ingredients

8 oz flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon sugar (optional--lends tenderness and a bit of sweetness)
3 oz. cold butter, cut into cubes
8 oz. cold milk/cream/buttermilk

Whisk or sift together the flour, baking powder and salt (sugar and soda, if you are using). Toss the butter cubes into the flour mixture. Break up the butter into smaller and smaller pieces, until you have some pieces the size of peas and some a little smaller. Keep everything cold. If the butter starts to soften, put your bowl into the fridge for a few minutes to firm it up again.

When the flour mixture is ready, pour about half of the cold dairy over the top. Mix lightly with your hand or a bowl scraper. Don't use a wooden spoon or a mixer--you'll overwork the dough and end up with special Blues Brothers Rubber Biscuits.

Add as much of the rest of the milk as you need to make a soft dough--you don't want it too wet or too dry. It will stick to your hands, but you don't want it so wet that it drops from a spoon. It should hold together well.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Turn and fold the dough about five or six times. This is what I mean: pat the dough out onto the floured surface, and use your bench scraper to fold the dough in half. Turn a quarter turn, pat out gently and fold again. You don't need a rolling pin for this--you want to be very gentle with the dough.

Pat the dough out into a square about 1/2 inch thick. Square off the edges with a bench scraper, cutting off the smallest amount you can. You will end up with a square of dough with straight sides. Cut with a bench scraper into squares about 1 1/2." Why squares? If you cut circles, you'll either end up throwing away all the ends or you'll re-roll the ends to cut some more biscuits. Those biscuits will be tough. Just cut them in squares. Almost no waste, and tender biscuits. Everybody wins!

Bake these little guys off on a parchment-lined cookie sheet at 400-425 degrees, F. If you're using a convection oven, you can turn the thermostat to 375 degrees, F. Take them out when they are well risen and golden brown on the tops. Depending on your oven, this could take anywhere from 10-20 minutes. Start checking them at 10 minutes, and go from there.



Variations

You can do so much with a basic biscuit recipe to make it your own.

Thanks to woodleywonderworks for the pic. See the photostream here.

Eggs are magic. They can be used in so many ways in the bakeshop. Dense creamy egg custard? Check. Richer than rich creme brulee? Check. Light and airy meringue? Check. Chewy macaroons? Check.

Eggs have it all. They can bring richness, flavor, moistness, dryness, airiness, denseness--all depending on which part of the egg you use and how you treat them.

The two parts of the egg we use in the pastry kitchen are the yolks and the whites. Shells have their uses, but that's another lens. One day.

In a nutshell (egg shell):

Egg whites are made of protein and water.

Egg yolks are made of protein and fat.

Water, when mixed with flour=gluten. Gluten=tough stretchiness. Sometimes this is a good thing, as with bread. Sometimes this is a bad thing. Chewy cake, anyone?

Water from egg whites helps to activate gluten and provide some structure for baked goods. Using only yolks in a cake will give you a very tender, rich end product. Using only whites with no additional fat will render a drier, chewier product. Think angel food cake.


Using whole eggs in a cake gives you a nice middle-of-the-road-kind-of-rich-a-wee-bit-chewy texture.

Mixing whole eggs or yolks with dairy gives you a basic custard. Add some salt and pepper, and make scrambled eggs. Add some sugar and vanilla, and make a stirred custard on the stove top (creme Anglaise). Churn that in an ice cream maker and you get French Vanilla ice cream.


Use some starch in the mixture, and voila: pudding (or creme patisserie, if you want to be all French about it).

Take your custard, pour it in shallow cups, bake at 275 degrees F in a big pan of hot water, and you've got baked custard. Chill them, sprinkle some sugar on them and torch it: creme brulee. Caramelize some sugar, put that in your pans, and then pour in the custard and bake: flan, or creme caramel. Isn't this fun?!

Whip egg whites with some sugar until they form peaks, and you've got meringue. Add some lime zest and lime juice to it, and top a key lime pie!

Take those same sweetened egg whites, fold in some flour and baking powder, and there's your angel food cake again.

There's a lot of science behind what goes on when eggs get heated--protein coagulation and whatnot. Suffice to say, the more slowly you heat eggs, the creamier they will be. If you heat them too quickly, the proteins seize up and squeeze out all the water. What is left is little rubber balls of egg. Yuck.

This module only begins to scratch the egg shell. There will be more!

Thanks to jessicafm for the photo. Photostream is here.

Fat is imperative. I know, I know--what about our health? Well, don't sit down and eat a stick of butter or a croissant, mondo muffin or huge piece of cake every day. Moderation, people!

Back to what I was saying: Fat is imperative. It helps baked goods rise, it tenderizes, it carries flavor. It inhibits gluten formation, it provides a smooth mouthfeel and a tight crumb.

Not all fats are created equal, however. In the bake shop, we generally think of butter, shortening and oil as the fats used in baking. Lard and margarine are other fats that can be used, but since lard is rarely used these days and margarine is evil stuff, let's focus on the first three.

Butter has some interesting properties that make it behave differently at different temperatures. While rock-hard when frozen and very firm at refrigerator temperatures, butter becomes plastic and malleable when at cool room temperatures, softening rapidly and melting quickly at a relatively low temperature (90-95 degrees, F) into a thin pool of liquid.

It stands to reason that the temperature at which we incorporate butter into our recipes will have a major impact on the final texture of whatever we're baking.

To make a very flaky pie crust, try cutting refrigerated butter into pieces about 1/4." Put them in the freezer until they are hard. Then, once you've mixed your pie crust ingredients with the rock-hard butter, roll it out between parchment, rolling the hard cubes of butter into hard flakes of butter.

When making a tender cake or a puffy cookie, cream sugar and butter at cool room temperature (about 68 degrees, F)when it is at its most plastic and stretchable, to incorporate the maximum amount of air into the batter or dough. Creaming to a very light and airy state=lots of air bubbles=lots of rise in the oven as the air in all the bubbles expands.

If your butter is too soft when you start to cream it with the sugar(say between 75-85 degrees) it will lose its plasticity and not hold air bubbles. Also, be careful when creaming that you don't cream for so long that the butter heats up due to friction. It is best to start with butter that might be a little too cool, beat it alone until it becomes plastic, and then add the sugar.

Once the butter and sugar are creamed together, don't add other ingredients at refrigerator temperatures. You'll just make your butter harden and lose its plasticity.

You can see the issue here, I think. Too cold is just as bad as too warm. Err too much one way or the other, the result will be a dense cake. Pay attention to what you are doing and get an instant read thermometer to check the butter temperature if you are unsure.

Add melted and cooled butter to a muffin mixture to get the perfect balance of structure (from some gluten development), tenderness (from the liquid butter coating the flour) and flavor (because butter just tastes so darned good).