Quality bakery ingredients

In baking cakes and sweets, Quality bakery ingredients have a significant effect on their taste.

In this article, we are going to examine the materials and their types and quality…

Flour

The first thing that is important in the quality of raw materials for confectionery is flour.
It might be interesting to know that we have 23 types of flour, which are: flour 150; 180 flour or whole flour, instant flour or agglomerated flour, triticale flour, dark flour, barley flour, wheat germ flour, khabazi flour, hand flour, light flour, bran flour, star flour, white flour, bread flour, pastry flour, cereal flour, enriched flour, instant flour, buckwheat flour, vegetable flour, soft flour, null flour, and old flour.

To determine the quality of the flour, after you open the bag, take some of it and smell it.
It should have a fresh and good smell. If it is not harmful to health, it is possible to use it or not by baking the bread.
If the smell of the flour is due to mold and rotten wheat, or if the flour remains because of high humidity, the final bread will be dark and have a bad smell.

There are different types of flours, and moving and replacing them in recipes will spoil the final quality of the product.
Flour has a type of protein that we know as gluten.
Fours with high gluten are heavier. And they are used in the preparation of bread.
The flours that have low gluten are lighter and they are used in the preparation of cakes and biscuits.

Different causes of flour smell:

۱٫ Disease in wheat grain
2. Wheat spraying
3. Fungi and insects

Flour must be free of any foreign substances or living and dead pests and have its own natural color.

Cake flour or three-zero flour usually has a soft texture and even without sifting, they have the form of flour that has been sifted several times. You don’t have consistency and you feel that your dough or cake batter is too stiff, it shows that the quality of your flour is not suitable and you are using flour with high gluten. Be sure to change the brand and try again to find the right flour.
Of course, you can recognize the quality of flours through experience.

Wheat flour is prepared by grinding whole wheat, and its color is darker than white flour and it is not recommended for making cakes and sweets.
Wheat flour Because it is produced by grinding whole wheat, it is not worth using in cakes and sweets.
Because it makes the texture of the cake cohesive and dense, and the cake no longer has the necessary softness.

The best place to store flour is in the refrigerator in a way that does not see air.

Eggs

Egg is the second most important ingredient in the quality of pastry ingredients for baking cakes.
The temperature of the egg has a great impact on the quality of the pastry, and it is better if it is at room temperature when using it.
It should also be dated. Pay attention to the expiration date of the egg. If the date has passed, it will not make the fluff you want and it will have a great effect on the cake baking. You can use vanilla or essential oil to remove the bad smell of the egg. You should not touch the recipe and use the same amount as written, neither less nor more.
In order to get a better result, it is better to use medium eggs.

Cocoa and chocolate

The next thing that is important in the quality of confectionery raw materials is chocolate and cocoa
To recognize the good quality of the cocoa powder, it can be understood from its smell, aroma, taste, and color.
The aroma of fresh cocoa beans from quality cocoa can be smelled easily, besides it has a very delicate texture.
The color and taste should not be like sawdust. .

To make chocolate, the cocoa bean is kneaded and the cocoa butter is separated from it.
After that, the cocoa butter is combined with the cocoa powder again, and by adding other additives, all kinds of chocolate are produced.
For example 80% chocolate has a higher degree of purity than 50% chocolate.
80% chocolate has a bitter taste due to the presence of less sugar. It also has terry. In the same way, chocolates are classified: as dark chocolate, normal chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate.

The way to recognize high-quality chocolate is that it melts immediately when we put it in the mouth, because cocoa butter melts at 37 degrees, while most people think that high-quality chocolate should be hard and not melt quickly.
Many low-quality chocolates do not melt in the sun.
The color of fake chocolate is dull, but healthy chocolate is shiny and because it does not have a lot of sugar, it should have a bitter taste.

Next up sweeteners

Sugar is used to sweeten cakes and sweets, which has two types: white sugar and brown sugar

Raw sugar turns into white sugar after the refining process and molasses (juice) is separated from it. To produce brown sugar, they add molasses to white sugar again.

We have two types of brown sugar; Pale and bold. “Light brown sugar” has 3.5% molasses and “dark brown sugar” has 5.6% molasses added to it.
The difference between white and brown sugar is that brown sugar is the same white sugar that has molasses added to it. to do. As a result, brown sugar has a special color, taste and aroma, which in the light sample is milder than the dark one.
Granulation in white sugar is important because when we want to use sugar in creams, if it is coarse granulated sugar, it takes time. Stir it more until it dissolves. Coarse granulated sugar also has a negative effect on the quality of biscuits, because it may not mix and melt well in the butter due to the coarseness of the granules, and it will cause the biscuits to fall apart during baking.

Vanilla

Vanilla is one of the most expensive spices, whose pleasant aroma and taste have made it widely used.
It is used to sweeten and flavor coffee, yogurt, ice cream, soft drinks, cakes and baked goods They use it.

baking powder

Baking powder is a common chemical processing agent that is used to puff, lighten and fluff the cake texture in many cakes and pastries.
In most cases, this powder is used to puff cookies. Pancakes, bread, or other products made from loose dough are used.
Baking powder has a bitter taste.
To test the expiration date of baking powder, pour a little of it into a container and add water. Bubbles should appear within 10 to 15 seconds; If the powder does not react with water, the expiration date has passed.

Oils and fats

Oil affects the texture of the cake and is very important because in addition to mixing the components of the cake by creaming, it preserves the air in the layer of the cake dough.
Using margarine (vegetable butter) instead of oils Usually, in addition to making the cake components mix faster, it causes the water used to rise, which is why the cake’s staleness is delayed.

To prepare cookies and biscuits, animal butter is used, which has a good taste and softens the texture.

To make the cake-baking process easier, read the article Baking Tools for Cake.