The Beginner's Baking Cookbook

Chapter 1: Baking Basics: Your First Steps to Success

Welcome. If you are reading this, you probably fall into one of two camps. Either you have never baked anything in your life and you are curious, or you have tried a few times and ended up with something that looked nothing like the picture and tasted only okay. Let me assure you, right now, before we even talk about flour: both of those experiences are completely normal, and both are exactly why I wrote this book.

Here is the truth that most baking blogs and glossy cooking shows will not tell you: baking is not magic. It is not a mysterious talent that you are either born with or you are not. Baking is a set of predictable chemical reactions, and your job is simply to set up the right conditions for those reactions to happen correctly. That is it. Once you understand that, and once you learn a few basic skills, you will be able to bake just about anything with confidence.

So let me be clear about what this book is. It is a gentle, thorough, no-nonsense walk through the essentials. We are going to start with the very why of baking: why we measure certain ways, why we use certain ingredients, why we mix in certain orders. Then we will move into the how: the actual recipes, each one tested in a standard home oven with standard grocery-store ingredients, each one written to teach you something new.