I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking

I love Alton Brown, and I love baking - no idea why I had never read this. When I got it for my grandson who is trying to bake semi-professionally, I glanced through it and immediately ordered another for myself.
This is not a cookbook as we know it. This is the science of baking, written in a conversational tone, with real Alton Brown asides, just as though he were standing next to you in the kitchen. As he says, if you are looking for a book of recipes, this isn't it (although he does include the basics). But if you want to learn how to bake, and why attention to detail is so important, you couldn't do better than to start here.

Caution: Don't read this book on a full stomach becuase you might make yourself sick by laughing. Alton Brown is even funnier in person than on his television program. His book on baking is funny too. I laughed at almost every page. Since baking usually has me in tears, this was a welcomed change. Only Alton would try to explain the dangers of whipping egg whites by describing a RiverDance routine gone badly -- and have it make perfect sense. The book has a nice format, with an overflap outlining generic steps for each baking categories.

This is the sort of book I’ve been looking for, for years. My old flat-mate, Dr Moss, always claimed that cooking was just chemistry but I really didn’t understand the sort of cooking chemistry that was required and this book sets it out really well for baking. It’s not all sorts of cooking: just baking. But there is an absolute treasure house of information and tips here. Plus a real wealth of recipes....which I’ve just skimmed. One thing did rather stand out for me and that was the author’s (or is it really an American thing) predeliction for chocolate and sweet things included in the culinary delights. I did learn a lot from this book...especially things like the water in butter and the need to keep yolk out of egg whites show more when whipping.
I’ve included a few extracts of things that caught my attention below:
Why cornstarch? Unlike flour, cornstarch is almost pure starch, no protein or any other substances to worry about.
Triglycerides that are high in saturated fats tend to come from animals and are solid at their intended storage temperatures.
The French baguette is traditionally made with a “lean” or fat-free dough, which is why it’s so darned chewy and why it dries out and gets hard so fast. [I’ve always wondered about that]. Add some fat and it lubricates the structural elements (the protein and starch) keeping the overall structure tender.
If you receive your water via municipal supply, it’s been treated with chemicals, chief among them, chlorine.........it stands to reason that this is not the best place for yeast to be....Hard water can be good for bread because it strengthens glutens in yeast doughs.....Most commercial water-softening systems inject a fair amount of sodium into the water and that can pose problems for yeast as well as chemical reactions inside doughs and batters.....If you have strange problems with baking, try changing to bottled water
Only wheat flour contains the proteins responsible for gluten formation.
If you want to accurately measure flour you have to weigh it. [Because of packing issues etc].
Since gluten is not water-soluble, it makes bread pleasantly chewy. It can also make pie crust, biscuits, and muffins chewy—or downright hard, which isn’t a good thing. That’s why agitation and/ or water content are kept to a minimum in such products.
If the percentage of protein is high, the wheat is called “hard,” and the flours milled from it—which are called “strong”—may have a protein content as high as 13 percent. If the protein content is low, the wheat is called “soft,” and the flour milled from it “weak.” The higher the protein content, the more gluten formation is possible.
Durum flour is so darned hard that it’s only good for a few things, namely pasta making. It’s an ancient breed and despite being loaded with proteins, it’s not the kind of protein that makes gluten, so durum is terrible for bread making......But without wheat flour, there won’t be any gluten. No gluten, no elastic bubbles—and that means weak and flabby bread.
All you really need to know is that gelatin strands are long and thin and that they move around a lot when they’re warm. When they drop below 50 ° F, they slow down and tangle up, resulting in a microscopic mesh capable of holding the liquid of your choice in a firm gel.
Egg whites contain mostly water and protein; no fat.......Egg yolks contain protein, less water, and all the egg’s fat—as well as phospholipids that act as emulsifiers.....But if you’re whipping up a custard, these biological bungee cords [chalaza: the link between yolk and white] will have to be strained out before cooking or you won’t achieve a smooth texture. Since the chalaza dissolves as the egg ages, you could simply skip the strainer and wait a few weeks for your eggs to get old.
Egg Gels. When “cracked” or denatured by agitation, acid, or heat, egg proteins weave together in a three-dimensional net that can capture and hold moisture, starch, fat—whatever......The same protein mesh that makes cakes and custards possible can also be used to reinforce tiny bubbles that, when grouped together, become a foam.
Although egg-white foams are the most acclaimed, yolk-only and whole-egg foams are also possible and darned useful.
The only difference between glucose and fructose is that glucose has a six-sided carbon ring while fructose’s ring has five. They have the same chemical formula.
Table sugar is 99.9 percent sucrose, a disaccharide made up of one fructose and one glucose molecule.
There are records of “honey without bees” [presumably sugar from sugarcane which reached India from PNG approx. 3,000 years ago] being produced along the banks of the Ganges River at least 2,500 years ago.
Powdered sugars are packaged with cornstarch, which absorbs the moisture that would otherwise turn the contents into a white brick......Today brown sugar is simply white sugar with molasses added after the fact.......Turbinado sugar is made from unrefined raw sugar.
slightly lighter version of turbinado called demerara is especially popular for coffee in the UK.
There’s also a special sugar made in Japan called wasanbon toh. It’s made from a very special type of sugarcane called chikutoh, which is short and skinny. The fine crystals of this sugar are the product of a long, intensive, hands-on process.
Sugar tenderizes baked goods in two different ways. First, it gets in the way. For example, sugar molecules get between egg proteins in a custard, thus slowing the coagulation process. Sugar is highly hygroscopic, or water-loving, so it can also tenderize by grabbing water and preventing it from being used by tough structural components like protein and starch......Sugar preserves by binding up water so that it’s not readily available to the microbial life forms that would love to get hold of it.......Sugar leavens by punching tiny holes into solid fat. In the heat of the oven, these bubbles expand, thus lifting the product and creating its internal texture.......Sugar also aids leavening by slowing the movement of water into starch, and that means batters and doughs containing sugar can expand further before setting.
Sugar stabilizes egg foams by holding onto and dissolving in the water contained in the bubble walls. That’s why angel food cakes are so much easier to make than soufflés,
Although caramelization and Maillard reactions are often confused, it’s important to note that Maillard browning can take place at much lower temperatures than caramelization—and without added sugar. When you get a nice brown sear on the outside of a steak, that’s Maillard at work, not caramelization.
But only cows and their kin (yaks, for instance) produce enough fat for the butter-making process to be practical.).....Most of the butter produced in the United States and Canada is only 80 to 85 percent butterfat. The other 15 to 20 percent is water......When it comes to baked goods, butter really isn’t very efficient and it’s kind of a pain to deal with, because:
Butter isn’t 100 percent fat, so when using in a recipe you always have to consider the water content.......Butter has a very narrow window of plasticity and is best worked with between 18 degrees C and 21 C. Any colder and it’s hard as a rock; by the time it hits 36 C, it’s completely liquid......Butter goes rancid quickly......If I need to cut butter into flour for pie crust or biscuits, I use the large holes on a box grater to just grate it into the flour. Just spray the face of the grater with a little nonstick vegetable spray beforehand so that it doesn’t bind.
Shortening remains plastic at a much wider temperature range than any other solid fat.
Unlike butter, shortening is 100 percent fat.....Although they’re made from vegetable oils that are high in unsaturated fats, shortenings are partially hydrogenated, which makes them mostly saturated.....Why do they call it shortening? Because fats (all fats, really) shorten gluten strands by lubricating them so they can’t grip each other.
Butter tastes a heck of a lot better
These new fatty acids are called “trans fatty” acids and they may be even worse for us than saturated fats. So if you’ve been using shortening as a way to avoid butter you may be wasting your time.....Basically, shortening can do everything that butter can do, and do it better—except for three things: it doesn’t brown well; it tastes like, well, nothing; and in “laminated” doughs (like puff pastry), well, it’s just a mess—that’s because, with a melting point just above normal body temperature, it doesn’t have a good mouthfeel.
Since they can’t trap bubbles and don’t contain any water, oils don’t do any leavening whatsoever.....Since they’re liquid at room temperature, they do however contribute a sense of moistness, despite the fact that they don’t actually contain anything wet.
If someone says, “Wow, that _________ is so moist,” it’s because of oil.
Oils are used in nearly all applications calling for the Muffin Method.
There are several methods of pasteurization. The law requires (at the very least) that milk be heated to 145 ° F for 30 minutes......Milk processors opt instead for something called HTST or “high-temperature-short-time” pasteurization, which takes only 15 seconds at 161 ° F. Of course, at these temperatures, the resulting milk tastes a lot like white water—
Milk looks white for the same reason that a meringue looks white. It is composed of very small orbs—only instead of bubbles they are amalgamations of protein and calcium called “micelles.” Light can’t pass through them so white is reflected back.
If you’re willing to jack that temperature to 280 ° F for even two seconds, you have UHT, or ultra-pasteurized milk, which tastes even less like anything.....Most American milk is completely skimmed. All the fat is removed and then a specific percentage of fat is added back in, depending on what the market demands
Buttermilk, that is—the liquid left over after the churning of butter. Today’s buttermilk is little more than lowfat milk to which lactic acid bacteria have been added.
Sour cream is light cream inoculated with lactic acid bacteria. In the United States, sour cream must contain a minimum of 5 percent lactic acid.
Ultraviolet light can damage various structures in the milk, robbing it of nutritional value and creating off flavors.....Clear bottles are only suitable for a day or two of storage....Cream is much easier to whip when it’s cold so chill your bowl and whisk/ beater. Unlike egg whites, which increase six to eight times in volume when whipped, cream usually only doubles in volume
A leavener is either a bubble or something that blows a bubble.
Since they rarely appear in ingredient lists, it’s easy to forget about air and steam, and yet they do most of the leavening on this planet. In fact, some devices, like those built from choux paste and popovers soar to considerable heights on the expansive natures of air and steam alone.....Steam is an amazingly efficient leavener because as water changes to vapor it expands in volume more than a thousand times. No matter what other leaveners are in use, steam and air will be at work too.
In the case of cakes and yeast-leavened breads, the bubbles are actually “planted” by the baker through mixing and kneading. In the case of cakes, which have fine, tight textures, the bubbles are created by the cutting of sugar granules into solid fat, a crucial step in the Creaming Method, as we shall soon see.
Fine textures are created in yeast breads by kneading and by the folding that follows the first and (occasionally) the second rise. This folding breaks up the large bubbles blown during the first rise so that they may rise again. If the baker is careful, his or her bubbles can literally multiply right alongside the yeast that exhale into them.
Since there aren’t too many bases hanging around the kitchen (ammonia and egg whites are the only ones I can think of), we require the services of a special additive to mix with our acids: baking soda.
Pearl Ash, or potassium carbonate extracted from wood ash, was first used as a baking soda in America around 1790......Eventually it was replaced by sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) aka bicarbonate of soda, aka bicarb, aka baking soda, which can still produce a soapy flavor, unless it’s counteracted by acid.....Most of the world’s baking soda is made from vast trona deposits found in mines in Wyoming and dry lake beds in California. Who knew?
Cream of tartar, or potassium hydrogen tartrate, is a pure and all-natural acid that’s harvested from the inside of wine barrels in the form of tiny crystals. If you’ve ever opened a bottle of red wine and noticed tiny sparkles reflecting off the bottom of the cork, then you’ve seen tartaric acid crystals.
All baking powders available in this country give off the same amount of CO2: 12 percent by weight.....So, if cream of tartar is an acid and baking soda is a base, why not put them together and sell them as “baking powder”? Good idea.
Baking powders contain baking soda as well as an acid with which it can react. Since all it takes is a wee little bit of moisture to start the reaction, cornstarch is also added to absorb atmospheric moisture.....Commercial “double-acting” baking powder, contains two or more different acids, one that dissolves and gives off CO2 immediately upon mixing and another that doesn’t give off gas until it’s heated. That gives the baked good in question an opportunity to catch another lift before setting.....Once opened, a can of baking powder only has a lifespan of six months.
Instant yeast is superior to active dry. You can add it directly to the flour before mixing doughs.....Slow rises in a cool place will produce better flavor and texture every time.
Without salt, yeast run wild, often overproducing to the point where the entire population burns itself out before the bread gets to the oven. Salt keeps the population under control.
In fact, of the hundreds of known strains of commercial yeast, the one used in bread making most often is Saccharomyces cervevisiae (Latin for “beer sugar”).
It’s important to note that since yeast cells lack the enzyme amylase, they cannot break the starch in flour down into sugar, which is a shame because it’s sugar that they eat. To make up for this, most millers add amylase to their flours.
Fresh or cake yeast. Basically zillions and zillions of yeast cells compressed into blocks (Compressed yeast blocks are only about 30 percent yeast. The rest is moisture.)
Active dry yeast (aka the stuff in the little triple pouches). An oxymoron if ever there was one, these are essentially yeast mudskippers, which must be roused to action by “proofing.”
sprinkling the packet of yeast over a bowl of warm water or warm sugar water, you have “proofed” yeast.
Instant yeast is a hardy strain of dry yeast that’s been broken into very, very small granules and then packed with vitamin C in the form of ascorbic acid. This really turns the yeast on upon waking.....Instant yeast is also meant to be mixed directly into the dry ingredients—no soaking or proofing first, which means no chance of killing it with too hot water.
if you’re going to make great bread—really great bread—you’re going to have to cultivate your own sourdough starter.....When I bake with yeast, I use filtered or bottled water. If you can’t manage either, draw the water and let it sit open for six hours so that the chlorine can dissipate.
Besides contributing its own flavor, salt can “complete” flavors as well as “turn them up.” In other words, salt makes things taste more like themselves. In even small amounts, salt can make chocolate taste more like chocolate or a tomato more like a tomato.
Extracts are made by chopping and soaking ingredients such as herbs, nuts, berries, and other ingredients containing alcohol-soluble compounds (usually oils) in ethyl alcohol or a combination of alcohol and water. And the most commonly used of these is vanilla extract.
nibs are then rolled under heavy stone or metal wheels to produce a brown paste that’s called chocolate liquor, despite the fact that there’s no alcohol involved. From the time of the Maya to the eighteenth century, this substance was simply mixed with a few spices, frothed into water, and served.
Chocolate remained primarily a beverage until 1828, when a Dutch chocolatier named Conrad Van Houten devised a hydraulic press that could separate the cocoa solids, or cake, from the fat, or cocoa butter. Pulverize this cake and you’ve got natural cocoa powder,
it’s brick-red. With a pH of 5.2, it is fairly acidic.....Van Houten added alkalies to it, and that mellowed out the flavor. It also darkened the color into something more chocolaty.
What does affect the solubility of cocoa powder is the percentage of cocoa butter that’s still clinging to the granules. Since that differs from brand to brand, you’ll just have to shop around until you find one that makes you happy.
Baking chocolate, or unsweetened chocolate, is nothing more than chocolate liquor (that is, cocoa powder with cocoa butter) stabilized in cube or bar form.
Sweetened chocolate, semisweet, bittersweet, milk, and dark chocolate all contain different percentages of cocoa solids, sugar, and other ingredients such as vanilla, milk solids, and emulsifiers.
While most of us think that the boiling of water has a lot to do with heat, it’s really about pressure......By applying approximately 15 psi, the temperature inside a pressure cooker can elevate to 257 ° F.....A balloon half blown up at sea level will expand to full in a few thousand feet and explode soon thereafter.....Since most published recipes are tested at or near sea level, a baker in Denver, Colorado, or in base camp on Mt. Everest might experience some frustrating complications......This is especially true of light, air-filled batters like those in angel food cake and meringue and less true of dense batters like brownies and custards.
Grease pans well. Although science has yet to explain this sufficiently, baked goods stick more at high altitude. Also adjust your leavening. the amounts of chemical leavenings and yeast used should be reduced at higher altitudes....Cut back on both sugar and fats. Raise the temperature.....Baking temperatures should be increased by 25 ° F above 3,500 feet to speed the coagulation of proteins and the gelatinization of starches.....Reduce rising time. Rising times for yeast breads should be reduced slightly so that bread doesn’t overproof.
A higher protein content will result in stronger gluten capable of stretching with quickly expanding bubbles.
Alton Brown then goes into detail about his four basic mixing methods and includes a multitude of recipes under each heading. He also has stacks more tips and tricks along the way and explanations about why things work or don’t work. His four mixing methods are:
1. The Muffin Method
2. The Biscuit Method
3. And The Pie Variation
4. The Creaming Method
5. The Straight Dough Method
6. The Egg Foam Method
7. The Custards
And if this looks like 6 methods, then a couple are sub variations on the theme.
I really liked the book. Masses of interesting information there. Five stars from me. show less

A great cookbook for those who fear baking. Alton's instruction are simple, the recipes tasty and the layout is easy to read. No wonder the first book won the James Beard award!

The banana bread recipe in this book has become my all time favorite!

I really enjoy that this is a book about cooking technique rather than just recipes. Alton discusses the various methods used in baking (the "muffin method" for example) and how various ingredients affect the texture and flavor of baked goods.

Definitely a must have reference book!

Awesome book and one of my favorites. I love how he explains why things work the way they do. He always has such great tips and ideas for doing things differently in the kitchen (for instance, using a blender or food processor instead of a sifter).

Contains Dutch Baby (German pancakes, Yorkshire Pudding). Also an acceptable "Raisin Bran Muffin" recipe.