06. my staple baking ingredients

flours, salt, vanilla- not the frou frou shit that I also love...

Quick question- when you buy a cookbook, do you read the intro pages or do you skip right to the recipes and pick which ones you want to bake first? For a long time, I would get a book and skip right to the fun part, mostly because well I know what a rolling pin is and I felt I didn’t need that run down. I mean and also, lil ADHD brain cannot focus on reading when I want to WORK. BUT, those introductory pages are incredibly crucial and informative. They can also shape your final product. Because 9 times out of 10 the author will outline the specific brands of ingredients they used while developing their recipes and often times give notes on what/how to use another brand of ingredient in its place as there are subtle differences.

I’ll often get messages from people trying to trouble shoot my buttercream recipes and the first question I’ll ask is what type of butter they used. The butter they’re using might be lower in butterfat than what I’m using OR if they’re using some fancy pants European butter the butter fat percentage could be higher leading to a stiffer buttercream. Not all ingredients are created equally!

So I’ve compiled a list of my every day ingredients just as a reference point when you set out to bake any recipe on my website. By no means do you HAVE to use any of these. Nor am I saying to set out and completely overhaul your pantry to match what I’ve got. I just think this could be helpful to at least one person and that’s good enough for me :-)

This is just a list of the things that make their way into most recipes that I think make a real difference (flour, sugar, salt, etc.) as per recipe I’ll list any specialty items in the post!

FLOURS:

The types of flour I use most often are all-purpose, bread, and cake. For these I’ll always use King Arthur flour. It’s quality flour and available nationwide. They also carry a few of the specialty flours some of the recipes call for like rye or whole wheat.

I’m moderately into locally grown and milled flours like the Tehachapi Grain Project red fife and sonora flours or Grist & Toll hard red. Unless a recipe specifically calls for any of these you can assume I didn’t use them. It’s just when I share a recipe I want it to be as accessible as possible and often times these flours, while higher in quality can be pricier. So I’ll use them in the cakes I sell not so much in recipes I share. Make sense?

BUTTER:

I’ve been on the quest for the best butter at a moderate price point for what seems like forever. But, I’ve landed on the fact that the 4 pack of butter from Costco is the best ya can do. So, I use that in all my recipes. Though, I’m gonna be real with you… I do buy my own personal brick of Plugra for me. I don’t ever post laminated or puff recipes but if you’re gonna make a dough where you want lovely layers and BUTTERY FLAVORR!! opt for Plugra or Isigny if you’re fucking loaded.

SUGAR:

I feel like for granulated sugar there’s only ever two brands I see to begin with- C&H or Domino. I’m a C&H girl myself- which I recently found out stood for California & Hawaii?? 26 years of living and I had no clue, whooppsss. For light brown and powdered sugar (sometimes I’ll refer to this as 10x) I’m also using C&H.

For dark brown sugar though I’ll grab Beksul from Hmart. I find that the molasses content is a bit higher than C&H which lends a softer, moister texture to things like cookies and cake.

SALT:

STOP BEING AFRAID OF SALT IN BAKING OKAY!! Salt is a powerhouse and isn’t necessarily the flavor you’re bringing when you add it to a recipe. You don’t add salt to cookie dough to make it salty- it enhances things like chocolate, balances with the sugar, tempers the butterfat and just rounds things out.

I ride hard for Diamond Crystal kosher salt. I love the structure of the crystals- it’s a pretty fine grain that you can crush further between your fingers. I recently had to use Morton Coarse kosher salt because it’s all I could find on short notice (whoopsies) and gram for gram it’s twice as salty as diamond crystal… ruined a few batches of cake as they were TOO salty- which isn’t something I say often. So if you’re using Morton’s- use half of what the recipe calls for and try to dissolve the crystals in the liquid of the recipe to dispurse the flavor otherwise you might get hit with salty pockets!

COCOA POWDER:

My go-to is Guittard’s cocoa rouge, it has deep chocolatey flavor and this beautiful reddish brown hue to it. (and in the trenches of my BATK Youtube phase Brad expressed his love for it and let’s say that influenced me…)

I also use black cocoa a ton because well it makes things taste like oreos… who doesnt like oreos??? Once again King Arthur coming in clutch with black cocoa.

CHOCOLATE:

So I’m not really a chocolate person… So when I’m sourcing chocolate I’m rather picky and lean into the higher quality (and higher price range) brands like Valhrona or Weiss. Valhrona has a wide range of chocolates that all have vastly different flavor profiles, my favorites being Bahibe 46%, Carmelia 36%, Jivara 40% and Dulcey 35%. With these you can hit the mark for milk or dark chocolate while exploring depth of flavor within each type of chocolate.

For most of my recipe testing though I’ll opt for something a bit more affordable while still high quality like Cocoa Barry! Cocoa Barry is usually what I refer to when I’m talking chocolate in a recipe- unless I note otherwise!

VANILLA!

Vanilla, vanilla, VANILLA! So, I make my own vanilla. Mostly because for things like pastry cream and buttercreams I love using fresh vanilla pods- I love the speckled look the beans give and while vanilla bean pastes do the trick, nothing ever beats a fresh bean pod to me. Then I’ll add the spent pods to handles of Tito’s to infuse and make my own extract. Which takes TIME. At any given moment I have 4-5 handles infusing which I’ll decant when ready to use, then top each bottle of with fresh vodka- adding pods as they accumulate. For all of this, I get by beans from Slofoodgroup. As they ethically source their vanilla beans and are often running deals which makes this a bit more affordable on my end.

Should you not want to invest in this waiting game Neilsen Massey is my go to for commercially available extracts!

That about sums it all up. Once again this is all about the often used ingredients that I think will impact flavor and outcome of the bakes. Things like baking powder, baking soda, cornstarch etc. I find to work universally whenever I switch it up brand wise and don’t produce wildly different results! Feel free to ask any questions about other ingredients you might be curious about ♡