Baking newbie Simon Balissat and I have rummaged through the Galaxus kitchen range and put together the ultimate starter set for sweet pastries - and also clarified which baking utensils you can definitely do without.
Are you tired of Sarah from accounting always being praised by everyone for her homemade sweet treats? Your Linzer cake bought at the discount store looks pretty pitiful next to it? Then our video above is just the thing for you.
If you don't have time for the video, here are the baking basics in written form. Form! Haha. You get the idea
The basics of mixing and stirring
And you're ready for your first killer biscuits. I'll show you how it's done here.
Overview in the baking tin jungle
And you can pull the next cracker out of the oven.
Baking novice Simon is once again overenthusiastic. And I'm on the verge of despair in return. Source: Valentina Sproge
Mixing bowl, whisk, dough scraper, pastry brush and kitchen scales - all tools you may already have in your kitchen. If not, now is the time to get them. Especially a kitchen scale. If you want to achieve really good results, you need to weigh all the ingredients precisely. Yes, all the ingredients. Even milk, sugar and eggs. For very small quantities, as is sometimes the case with spices or baking powder, it can even be worth having a precision scale. I would never give my own away again. Not only because the baking results are better, but also because the Monk in me is positively triggered when I can weigh everything to the nearest 0.1 g (uuh baby).
Next up: the moulds. Yes, the penis baking tin is funny. But sorry, you probably won't need it more than once. So limit yourself to a few Basic baking moulds for now. As an author of baking books, I do the same and almost exclusively use moulds that most of us have at home in my recipes. These include an adjustable-length cake tin, a springform pan (ø 24 cm), a 12-cup muffin tin and a square cake tin (approx. 22×22 cm). If the moulds are also non-stick - even better.
When it comes to rolling out the dough, you can either rely on "your instinct" and improvise, or you can simply get the right equipment so that you can proudly present your pastries at the end. This includes a rolling pin or a rolling pin and dough sticks to help you determine the right dough thickness. Once the dough has been rolled out, you will need cutters. In my opinion, every good household should have a set of round cutters of different sizes and a few nice biscuit cutters for large Christmas biscuits (star, heart, Christmas tree, whatever you like).
With these tips and recipes, you'll easily topple the good Sarah aka "Madame Weisch-imfall-gar-so-schwierig-und-fasch-für-mich-fasch-wie-Meditation-haha" from the office baking throne. Finally, I'll give you one last and probably the most important piece of advice: please buy a pastry brush with real hair! The plastic thing with the creepy rubber bristles, which are a bit reminiscent of the 90s hairstyle of the lead singer of the Prinzen, is no good. The fact that it's "really easy" to wash off doesn't justify the fact that it doesn't fulfil its main purpose: greasing a baking tin or applying cake icing. If you already have one, get rid of it. Now.
