Which yeast should I use, and how do they differ?
Fresh, active dried and instant compared, the conversion ratios between them, and which need activating first.
beginner5 min3 min read
Baking & Bread
Doughs, batters and the chemistry underneath them.
126 guides in Food & Cooking
Why did my bread machine loaf collapse, or come out dense and pale?
Four bread machine faults — a sunken crater, a short dense brick, a pale soft crust, and a hole in the base — with the causes that produce each and the one habit that prevents most of them.
beginner12 min5 min readWhy did my cake mixture curdle when I added the eggs?
Curdled cake batter is a broken emulsion, and it has one dominant cause: cold eggs going into creamed butter. The one-spoon rescue, and the temperature band that stops it happening again.
beginner5 min4 min readWhy did my swiss roll crack when I rolled it?
Rolling the sponge hot so it sets curved, and the three other faults that crack a roll — overbaking, too much flour and too tight a first roll.
intermediate30 min3 min readWhy is my gluten-free bread dense and crumbly?
Why gluten-free dough is a batter rather than a dough, the binders that replace gluten, and the single rise it needs.
intermediate25 min3 min readWhy do baking recipes want room-temperature butter and eggs?
Because emulsions break when the ingredients are at different temperatures, and because cold butter will not hold air. What 'room temperature' actually means, and how to get there in fifteen minutes rather than two hours.
beginner5 min4 min readWhy does my pastry crack and crumble when I roll it?
Cracking pastry is short of water, too cold, or both. Which one it is decides whether you wait twenty minutes or start again — and one of them is fixable mid-roll.
beginner10 min3 min readHow do I make choux pastry that actually rises?
Drying the paste, judging the egg by consistency rather than count, and why opening the oven collapses it.
advanced45 min4 min readHow do I use gelatine and other setting agents?
Leaf against powder, the quantities that give a soft set rather than rubber, and the fruits that stop gelatine working entirely.
intermediate20 min3 min readShould I bake cakes with the fan on?
Fan is more even and lets you bake on several shelves, but it dries surfaces and browns less. Which setting suits which bake, and why the standard 20°C reduction is a rule of thumb rather than a law.
beginner6 min3 min readWhat does hydration mean in bread dough, and how much water do I need?
Hydration is the weight of water as a percentage of the weight of flour, and it is the single number that predicts how a dough handles and what crumb it bakes into. What each band on the scale actually feels like.
intermediate10 min4 min readHow do I fold flour into a cake mixture without knocking the air out?
Folding is a specific motion — cut down, sweep the base, lift and turn over, rotate the bowl — and it exists because stirring destroys the air you just spent five minutes beating in.
beginner3 min4 min readWhy did my cake overflow the tin?
A cake overflows for three separate reasons — too much batter for the tin, too much raising agent, or a tin that is the right width but the wrong depth. How to tell which, and what to do with the mess.
beginner10 min5 min readWhy did my lemon curd not thicken?
Lemon curd thickens when egg protein sets, which happens over a narrow temperature range that most people stop short of. It also thickens dramatically on cooling — so a thin-looking curd is often finished.
beginner15 min4 min readWhy did my puff pastry not rise in layers?
Puff rises because water in the butter turns to steam and pushes the dough layers apart. It fails when the butter is no longer in continuous sheets, when the oven is too cool, or when the cut edges are sealed shut.
advanced15 min5 min readCan I use margarine or baking spread instead of butter?
For creamed cakes, usually yes and sometimes better. For pastry, shortbread and anything laminated, no — the water content and the melting behaviour are wrong. The fat percentage on the tub is what decides it.
beginner6 min3 min readWhy did my caramel taste burnt and bitter?
Caramel goes from amber to acrid over about twenty degrees, and it keeps darkening after the pan leaves the heat. Judging it by colour and stopping a stage early is the whole technique.
intermediate15 min3 min readWhy do my cupcake cases peel away from the cake?
The steam that pushes the case away as the cake cools, and the four changes that stop it.
beginner10 min3 min readWhy is my cake crumbly and falling apart when I cut it?
A cake that collapses under the knife has too little of something holding it together — egg, liquid, or gluten — or too much fat and sugar. The crumb itself tells you which, and one of the causes is simply cutting it too soon.
beginner10 min4 min readWhy is my wholemeal loaf dense and short?
Wholemeal flour holds less gas than white for two mechanical reasons — bran cuts gluten strands, and the bran and germ absorb far more water. Both have direct fixes, and neither is a matter of trying harder.
beginner10 min4 min readWhy did my macarons crack, or come out with no feet?
Cracked tops and missing feet are opposite ends of the same variable — whether a skin formed before baking, and whether the batter was mixed to the right consistency. What each fault looks like and which step produced it.
advanced20 min4 min readWhy is my cheesecake base soggy, or falling apart?
A biscuit base is crumbs held by butter that has set solid. Too little butter and it crumbles; water reaching it from the filling or the water bath and it goes soggy. Two faults, two different defences.
beginner12 min3 min readWhy is my meringue chewy instead of crisp?
Crisp and chewy are set by the sugar ratio and the drying, not by the whisking. What decides which you get, and how to move a meringue deliberately in either direction.
intermediate10 min4 min readWhy is there liquid on top of my sourdough starter?
That grey or brown liquid is hooch — alcohol and water separating out of a hungry starter. It is a feeding signal, not spoilage, and what colour it is tells you how hungry the culture has become.
beginner5 min3 min read
Going deeper: PizzaHQ
Dough hydration and fermentation schedules, flour selection, oven types and bake profiles.