11 Common Baking Mistakes That You Might Be Making Without Even Realizing Them

Baking is an art that you can master only with practice. During the training, recipes should be appropriately followed without making any kind of Baking mistakes during the process of baking. If you do any mistakes, then it directly impacts the taste or shape of the baked product

If you want to bake the products to make them look good in shape or taste exactly according to your expectations, then you must read this article. After reading this article, you will know the most common mistakes which are often made by amateur bakers like you and how to avoid them while baking.

Wrongly Measuring Ingredients:

As a baking practitioner, you must be precise about measuring the ingredients. If you incorrectly measure the ingredients, then the baked product will not taste the same as you expected it to be.
All the types of ingredients are not measured in the same way, and different ways are there to measure different kinds of ingredients.

Remember, you must never use the liquid measuring cup for measuring the dry ingredient nor use the dry measuring cup for measuring a liquid ingredient. So, let’s discuss them in detail on how to measure various ingredients.

If you are trying to measure a dry ingredient like flour, then use the measuring cups rather than a weighing machine by transferring it to the measuring cup with a spoon and levelling it with the help of a knife.

Special Tip:
Level the dry ingredients with a bowl or parchment paper beneath the measuring cups so that you can collect the excess ingredient to reuse the same.

If you are trying to measure liquids, then you must use liquid measuring cups that are generally made of glass or plastic and have a spout. The measuring cups for wet ingredients are not like the ones used for dry ingredients as they will have more volume with a mark so that there won’t be any overflow, unlike in the case of dry ingredient measuring cups.

How to Measure Sticky Ingredients?

Sticky ingredients like honey need to be measured in a different style as if you measure directly, and you will be wasting a lot of time washing the measuring cups. So, the best way to measure them is by following the below method.

Use a plastic wrap covering the measuring spoon and transfer the sticky ingredient into that. Later fold the plastic wrap and make a hole at the bottom of the plastic wrap with a bowl below it. This is the best way to measure and use the sticky ingredients in baking.
You should not use the cold ingredients, especially which are generally stored in refrigerators like butter or eggs, etc. You need to bring their temperature to the room temperature before you start using them while baking.

Using Ingredients of different temperatures:

For example, consider the eggs stored in the refrigerator. You need to place them in a bowl with water so that the temperature of the eggs will become equal to the room temperature. Only after doing so, you need to use them for baking.

Also Read: IS BECOMING A BAKERY CHEF A GOOD CAREER CHOICE IN INDIA?

Butter is also commonly used for baking and stored in cold temperatures. You must grate the butter so that its temperature will become equal to the room temperature. But remember butter should never be allowed to melt completely it should have some shape before you use it in a baking recipe.

So ensure that all the ingredients you are going to use are at the room temperatures.

Wrongly Using A Oven:

When you are about to use an oven, preheat the oven before you use it for baking the dish as the cold oven might damage the taste or texture of the product, you want to bake. So you must preheat the oven.

Remember, the baking process might take a bit longer or shorter duration based on the oven you are using. For example, to check a cake, whether it’s done or not, better use a toothpick and see whether the pieces are sticking to it or not. If not, then it is ready to bring it out from the oven. But don’t open the oven too frequently as it would disturb the baking process.

Most of the ovens are not properly calibrated, so get an oven thermometer and cross-check the temperatures whether temperature shown in the oven thermometer and oven calibration are the same or not.

Wrongly Mixing the Dry And Wet Ingredients:

When you are mixing the dry and wet ingredients to prepare the dough to bake, you must use a spatula rather than an electric mixer. Transfer the dry and wet ingredients into a bowl, cut exactly in the middle of the mixture with a spatula by scraping from the bottom of the bowl and gently bring it to top. Cut and fold method using spatula is the best way to mix dry and wet ingredients.

Remember, you should mix with a spatula until there are no dry parts in the mixture that are visible but not for a long time as it would result in increasing the density of losing all the air present.

Not Preparing Your Pan Ready For Baking:

Before you use the pan, you must brush the pan with butter or vegetable oil gently with a pastry brush. Otherwise, the baked item gets stuck, and it will be hard to empty the pan properly without losing the shape.

Also, you need to use a parchment paper rather than a butter paper as it is heat resistant to cover the bottom of the pan so that it would be as a base for your baked item, such as a cake. So you must prepare the pan before you use it for baking.

Wrongly Baking The Cookies:

While you bake the cookies, you need to mix the batter properly. If you undermix the batter with sugar, then the cookies will end up being dense. Moreover, you need to cool the cookie dough by refrigerating it so that the cookies would much be better in terms of taste and texture.

While baking the cookies in the oven, better use a proper silicone baking mat, which helps you save time while cleaning as well. Ensure to take them out from the oven when their edges have hardened.

Special Tip:
While adding the ingredients like fruit or chocolate chips to your cookie mix better coat with flour and then only add to your cookie mixture.

Not Allowing Your Pie Crust to Bake For Enough Time:

When you bake a pie crust, you need to allow for a long enough time so that the entire part of the pie crust is baked. The best way is to bake the pie crust without adding the filing until it turns golden brown, and then you can add the fillings to bake it thoroughly.

Remember, if you try to bake the raw pie crust along with the fillings at a time, then some parts of the pie crust, especially which are not exposed to oven directly, might not get cooked. So, it is better to prepare the pie crust individually and later add the fillings to bake it further and complete it.

Experimenting Without Understanding the Science Of Various Ingredients:

Baking is an art that requires you to be creative while preparing recipes so that you can bake more delicious products. But before you start experimenting with various ingredients, you must understand the ingredients like whether they are alkaline or base so that the taste would be good enough.

For example, consider the most used ingredient baking soda. It is alkaline, so you must use it while making an acidic flavored cake-like chocolate or any other ingredient which acidic finally it will be a combination of acid and base, resulting in good taste. So you must understand the ingredients properly before you try experimenting with various ingredients.

Remember, you should never get confused between baking soda and baking powder while using in the process of baking otherwise, the baked product will not be as per your expectations as per the recipe.

Not Allowing Your Cakes To get Cooler:

Don’t just try to take them out immediately after baking the cake from the tin they might break. So, it’s better to let the cake cool for 30 minutes and start icing the cake later. Even in the cupcakes, you need to wait before you start frosting.

Baking the Cake Batter Without Releasing the Air Bubbles:

When you prepare the batter of a cake, you must hit the pan with batter on the counter, so unnecessary air bubbles will come out from it. This needs to be done to ensure that the cake after being baked, there are no empty spaces or holes inside the cake after baking it. Of course, there would be some air still left, which is necessary to obtain a good cake.

Cooling Muffins and Cupcakes in the pan:

After baking the muffins or cupcakes in the pan, you must wait for a few minutes but not let them cool down in the pan itself as there might be steam that cannot escape keeping them in the pan.
So, after a few minutes, transfer them to a wire rack where there is a good circulation of air and let them cool down there.

Conclusion:
You can become better at baking only when you practice. But during the practice, you might make mistakes. Now that you have learned various most common mistakes, I hope you can master the baking avoiding the mistakes and bake deliciously.