Bakers - a question ?

My kitchen aid stand mixer has totally upped my baking game!

Quality pans. Parchment paper and cooling racks are essential too.

Now that I've said start simple, I'm going to say I sort of lied. Get parchment paper. I use it for everything. And I can even use the cheap as hell cookie sheets from the dollar store and get perfect cookies every time using parchment paper.

An oven thermometer   will tell you if your oven heat  is accurate so that you don't burn or undercook/bake what you have in the oven. 

Reading ccomprehension is important so that you don't mistake teaspoon (tsp) for ttablespoon (tbsp).

I like to have the ingredients out on the counter and then place them back into the cupboard after using them.  If there is an ingredient lefton  the counter, it may be a sign that it was left out of the mixture. 

good baking sheets and measuring tools are a big help. I have a kitchen aid stand mixer but I also have the hand mixer when I'm too lazy to fiddle with the stand. an accurate timer is good too.

Love and patience for what you are doing.

I have stuff that you make most of your drool, but I still mix a cake in a good heavy bowl with a good serving fork.

If you are cooking in the USA you don't need a scale, we have very few home recipes that need to be weighed.
Things I like but really don't need:
Good heat resistant spatulas
Wooden spoons
Heavy baking sheets. I love the ones from cost co.
Wilton for "stuff".

Nordicware for fun "stuff"

Wilton cake release spray. You really can't use all the fun pans without it.

Remember unless you burn something to a crisp, nothing home baked is a total failure.

I love my french rolling pin because I like to make rolls and don't have to worry about bending the handles.

baking is science

cooking...not so much - you can throw thing together and they usually turn out okay

in baking - lots of sciency shit has to happen!

i learned from reading Cooks Illustrated

gina

I've been sitting here thinking about what I use when I bake. I bake bread pretty often and make pizza dough every Friday. I don't bake a lot of cakes, cookies or sweet pies because of DH's diabetes. I do make pot pie at least once a month.

After almost 30 years of marriage and baking/cooking for my family, these are some of the things that I use and love the most:

Kitchen Aid mixer - only if you have room to leave it out. Once I put it on my counter, I started using it. I have 2 metal bowls, an extra batter paddle that has a plastic scraping edge, and the dough hook. I also have a lot of non-baking attachments that I love.

A spoon that measures out 1 package of yeast (2 1/4 tsps) I LOVE THIS SPOON!!!!! LOL I buy yeast in 1lb packages and keep some in the fridge and some in the freezer. This spoon makes it so easy when a recipe says 1 packet of yeast. (I got mine at King Arthur's Flour)

SilPat liners - I use parchment paper, too, but I love my SilPats. You can get some generic ones off of Amazon for less than 1 SilPat brand costs and they are usually really good quality.

Thermometer - to measure the temp of liquids before you add them to yeast or to measure the temp of bread to see if it's done

Pans - I love the USA brand pans, as a PP mentioned. They are solid, bake evenly, and hold up well. Williams-Sonoma carries pans by the same company, but theirs aren't corrugated and are gold. My favorite pan right now is the Pullman loaf pan (or pain de mie pan, I think) It comes with a lid that helps to shape your bread into a perfect loaf shape.

I also suggest a digital food scale. Once you learn to measure by weight, you'll wonder why anyone wants to mess with volume measuring cups.

A good slicing knife to slice bread or to horizontally slice a cake for filling. I have a very long slicer I got as part of a not too expensive set of knives from Costco. I can slice anything from watermelon to roast with it. It's long enough to go completely through a watermelon or a cake layer. I also have a much more expensive slicer that I use when I want my slices to be perfect.

I have several rolling pins. My favorite is one DH gave me that's made from the same wood as a Louisville slugger. It's an even width from end to end and has no handles. I also love my French rolling pin, especially when I want to roll dough out really thin.

Paprika - my favorite app for cooking. I love the way you can grab recipes off the web with it. I have it on every device I own, even on DH's phone. I logged him into my account and taught him how to add recipes that sound good to him. He can also access my grocery list, so he can pick up what I need on the way home.

On my Christmas list this year is a 13X9 USA pan - mine disappeared! I'd also like one of the cloths that is used when you have French baguettes rising.

Marcy

I learned this from a Martha Stewart segment way before she became the household name she is today. She said that people make mistakes when they bake because they treat it like an art, rather than a science. Cooking may be an art, but baking is very much science and approaching it that way means you can produce the same product each time you make it. This really stuck with me and was really responsible for making me as good a baker as I am.

So..LOL I home schooled my kids. I used kitchen science as part of their early science curriculums. Why not kill 2 birds with one stone, right? Teach the kids how to correctly measure and set up a lab for experiments AND get some kitchen chores out of the way at the same time. 

One day we were studying in biology how digestion works, so I decided we would use yeast as a way of understanding how gas is produced when certain things are digested. We spent a couple hours in the kitchen blowing up balloons by putting them over the neck of  bottles containing various mixtures of yeast, liquids, and sugars. I whipped up a batch of rolls for supper, explaining I did so how the yeast would eat the sugar and give off gas that would make the dough rise. Of course, the kids got a kick out of the idea of eating yeast farts and belches. DH didn't find it as funny, though, when DD waited until he was in the middle of munching on a roll to tell him he was eating yeast farts. LOL I could tell he wanted to spit it out so bad, but knew he couldn't.

After that, I was "forbidden" to use meals as teaching tools. LOL

Marcy