Beginner’s Guide To Baking From Scratch

Written on October 8th, 2024

Inspired by The Great British Bake Off but have no idea where to start? Begin your baking journey with us and you’ll be a pro in no time!

Essential Equipment

First things first you’ll need to ensure you have the necessary equipment for baking success, whether you’re a keen baker or beginner there’s lots of tools out there to make your life easier.

• Digital Scales: Following your recipe and being able to measure your ingredients accurately is most important to gain the consistency you need for the perfect bake.
• Temperature Probe: Makes sure the proper temperatures are reached and maintained to allow your bake to cook fully.
• Long Serrated Knife: Perfect for cutting bread and cake layers.
• Non-Stick Baking Tins and Parchment Paper: There’s nothing worse than making a delicious traybake or cake and not being able to get it out of the tin!
• Bench or Hand Mixer: For whisking, beating and making dough, it will save your tired arms.

Cupboard Staples

Keep these cupboard staples to hand so you’re able to whip up your favourite bake whenever you fancy:

• Quality butter
• Vanilla paste, essence or pods
• Strong flour for bread
• Rice to blind bake your tart cases, you can re-use the same rice many times.

Our Top 5 Baking Tips For Beginners

1. Duck eggs are delicious and rich, perfect for crème brûlée and egg custard tarts. They are larger so use 1 duck egg = 2 hen eggs.
2. A good quality dark chocolate is more stable to cook with. When using milk or white chocolate you’ll need to add less sugar to your mix than with dark as their sugar content is higher. Why not try pairing milk chocolate with a little sea salt?
3. Use caramel instead of sugar in custard and crème caramel for a rich colour and flavour. It can also be marbled through traybakes like brownie and whisked with whipped cream for a quick and easy caramel mousse.
4. If you’re baking with bread, try using half the amount of yeast and allow the dough to ferment slowly for 24 hours in the fridge for a more authentic sourdough style crust and a deeper flavour. To help the bread rise and become crusty, place a small metal tin in the bottom of the oven and carefully add a small amount of water to produce steam.
5. Don’t want to use your oven? Try baking in an air fryer; bake in smaller batches or as individuals and turn the temperature down by 25°C and reduce the time by 5-10 minutes as they are more powerful and quicker.

Time to Bake!

We have a variety of baking recipes for you to try and enjoy but start small with our top 3 easy bakes:

If you’d like to challenge yourself more, tap here to find our full library of recipes.