5 things you’re doing wrong when baking (and how to fix them)
Pierre Hermé was already baking as a little boy. At fourteen, he went to work in Paris for Gaston Lenôtre, who is known as the Picasso of pastry. Since 1998, he has had his own Maison Pierre Hermé, a pastry shop in Paris that is absolutely finger-licking good. And in 2016, he won the award for best pastry chef in the world. So the man clearly knows how to bake. Great—then he can also explain why all that comes out of your kitchen is a complete disaster .
5 things you’re doing wrong when baking (and how to fix them)
1. Your kitchen is a mess
‘Creativity is born in chaos,’ gurus say. But Hermé puts a stop to that. ‘Clean up that mess,’ he says. ‘At Lenôtre everything was perfectly organized, and every detail received attention.’ And that’s not going to happen if your kitchen has just exploded. So clear your countertop and arrange your kitchen so you can grab what you need in one move. It’s a bit of a shame to have to rummage through the entire cupboard looking for a spatula or a mixing bowl while everything is going to waste on your worktop…
2. You make things far too complicated
‘First learn how to make simple things and repeat that until you’ve really mastered them. Only then should you try something complicated,’ Hermé advises. Start by baking a cake, or butter cake, he means. But no, most home bakers immediately aim for the top, attempting something as difficult as pink Champagne macarons or chocolate ganache.
3. You skip half the steps
You can’t cut corners when it comes to pastry, says Hermé. ‘Many people cut corners: they turn the oven up a little so the cake is ready faster.’ Bad idea, because then the outside burns while your cake remains wet and soggy inside. And icing is meant as decoration, not to cover up the burnt spots. Just so you know.
4. You don’t taste anything along the way
Cookie dough is delicious, and the apple pie should also be happy if there’s any dough left for its topping, considering how much of it gets nibbled before baking. You have a good excuse for that: by tasting a little, you can tell whether you’ve followed the recipe correctly. Forgot the sugar? That’s pretty noticeable, yes. And now you can still add it—not after you’ve once again pulled a disappointment out of the oven in tears.
5. You throw random ingredients into that cake
A recipe isn’t some kind of list of suggestions, of course: if it says self-raising flour, you can’t simply replace it with plain flour or cornflour or whatever white powder you happen to have. Naturally, Hermé only chooses the very best ingredients: he can smell and taste the difference between three types of vanilla beans and prefers those from Tahiti. For home bakers, it’s already a win if you don’t put vanilla sugar in your baking instead of vanilla essence. Or lemon juice, because it happens to be in a similar bottle and you’ve run out of essence. Or something like that.
Read also:
- Control freaks, this is wonderful: geometric cakes made with a ruler
- Recipe: pancake cake for when you fancy a fluffy cake but don’t feel like baking one
- This crème brûlée for dummies recipe is going viral (and we can see why)
