Home Baking - More Than Just Cakes And Cookies

Real baking is more than simply reheating store bought dough. However, baking is rapidly becoming a lost art; it is being practices less and less frequently as people's lives grow busier every day. If we took a minute to stop and think though, we'd realize that baking is important on so many different levels.

Did you bake when you were a child? Many of us did, although we may have forgotten the pride and joy we felt when the foods we made were brought out of the oven. We may have baked with our parents and our grandparents and even if it is just a hazy memory of licking the bowl, the feelings stay with us throughout our lives.

I don't get the chance to bake as often as I would like or that my children would like me to. It is true that baking takes time and patience and a good recipe to work from. But for me, baking is more than just producing cakes and cookies on demand. Every time I roll out a pie crust I remember working beside my grandmother. I put my hands in the dough to crumble in the shortening, and feel like I have touched the past.

Every family has recipes which are tried, tested and true. Whether it is a book, lovingly copied by hand and passed down complete with stains and notations or a series of cards, the ink fading in the years since they were first written on; the memories are still there. A recipe may be stored in memory; the maker working without notes, without instructions, sometimes without even proper measurements. And it is these foods that give us the most comfort and peace when we are tired, angry or hurting in body and soul.

If there is one thing that our children need, it is a connection to their past. They need to feel connected to the generations that have come before them and know that they are a part of a family moving forward into the future. If you remember how happy you felt cutting cookies for holiday baking or carefully pouring in the flour while someone else stirred the batter, you know how wonderful it was. And your children need these memories to take with them into adulthood.

If you do not have the time to bake from scratch, don't worry. As tempting as it is to shoo them out of the way, let your kids stay with you as you work. There are ways that you can use store bought dough and still pass on the same lessons and love. Talk to your children as you measure out the dough and prepare to heat the oven. Tell stories about what you used to do when you were a child and how baking and family, is still important to you.

Baking is about more than just food. The process of mixing, preparing and cooking breads, pies, cakes and cookies is something which can live on inside us. Knowing that you are teaching your children more than how to measure flour can give you a good feeling that nothing can take away.

Did you know that all flour does not necessarily come from wheat and bread is not simply limited to white and whole wheat varieties? If you have restricted your baking to only wheat flours all this time, learning how to bake with other flours can help you have more variety and flavor in your baking. However, there are a few things that you need to know about how to use different flours since they act differently and therefore must also be treated in different ways.

Flour is made from grain and is milled to produce a powder. The two grains that are most commonly used in North America to make bread are wheat and rye. You may also see rice flour, buckwheat flour and potato starch flour available. Rice and potato flours are becoming more popular in North America primarily because they do not contain gluten, a substance which many people are intolerant to.

Gluten, a substance found in many flours gives the flour elasticity and is an important part of bread and pasta dough. Bread flour that has been made with wheat often has a higher level of gluten in it as compared to all-purpose flours. You can make wonderful doughs from flours which are gluten free but you may need to handle the dough differently and sometimes even use alternate ingredients.

Rye flour, for example, does not rise as well with yeast if it is the only flour used in the dough. Many cultures use rye flour mixed with wheat flour or they will use sourdough starter as a way to leaven the dough. Leavening is the term used to describe the process by which dough becomes light and fluffy. There are unleavened breads as well which are quite popular around the world but they can be quite different from North American bread and many people have a hard time getting used to the difference.

If you are using flour which does not contain gluten, you will need to add a few different ingredients in order to get your recipes to turn out. These can include xanthan gum and guar gum. These substances allow flour that does not have any gluten in it to behave much as it would if it were made from wheat flour. There are a number of excellent recipes which you can use that give you information on how much to add to your recipe.

If you are working with rye flour, you may need to use different leavening ingredients. Rye flour can be mixed with regular flour, or you can use sourdough starter to get the dough to rise. If you are using alternate leavening agents, you need to make sure that you give the dough more time to rise.

If you are trying different flours, a good recipe can be your best friend until you get used to the way the dough will behave. If you are using tapioca flour or corn flour, you may want to consult ethnic websites since different cultures are more used to cooking with these ingredients than many North American cooks.

Whether it is a longer rising cycle or the addition of ingredients to replace gluten, working with non-wheat based flour can take some getting used to. The flavors and textures you will get as a result make it all worthwhile.