Baking

Baking ingredients are the flours, leaveners, chocolate, cocoa, vanilla and mixes that cakes, breads and cookies are built from. Several, such as Italian flour types, US cocoa grades and vanilla extract, have legal definitions, so their labels name a measurable standard.

How to choose Baking

  • Flour type. Italian law sorts sifted soft wheat flour into types 00, 0, 1 and 2 by a lab measure called ash. It runs from 0.55 percent at most in 00 up to 0.95 in type 2. Wholemeal flour is ground without sifting and runs 1.3 to 1.7 percent.
  • Pure vanilla extract. US standards call for at least 35 percent alcohol and the flavor of one unit, 13.35 ounces, of vanilla beans per gallon.
  • Baking soda or powder. Soda is a base and needs an acid in the batter, such as buttermilk, yogurt or vinegar. Most powder is double acting: it carries its own acids and releases gas once when wet and again in the oven.

About Baking

Baking ingredients give cakes, breads and cookies their structure, lift and taste. Under US rules, vanilla beans are the cured, dried pods of two orchid species, Vanilla planifolia and Vanilla tahitensis, and extract is their flavor drawn into alcohol and water.

Leaveners work by producing carbon dioxide, which forms the bubbles that make a batter rise. Cocoa comes in grades too: US breakfast cocoa holds at least 22 percent cacao fat, and plain cocoa between 10 and 22 percent. Chocolate for baking is sold in bars, chips and discs.

Keep baking powder and soda dry and covered. Powder lasts about 18 months and soda about 2 years, while unopened vanilla extract keeps about 2 years. Measure flour by weight when a recipe gives grams.

At a glance

Main types
Flour, leaveners, chocolate, cocoa, vanilla, baking mixes
Label terms
Tipo 00, processed with alkali, pure extract
Unopened
Baking powder 18 months; baking soda 2 years
Once opened
Vanilla extract about 12 months, tightly closed

Baking questions

What does processed with alkali mean on cocoa?

It means the cacao was treated with an alkali such as potassium carbonate, the style often called Dutch-process. US rules require the words processed with alkali, or processed with the name of the alkali used, beside the product name, and they cap how much can be added. Allowed alkalis include potassium and sodium carbonate and bicarbonate. Natural cocoa carries no such line, so the label is how to tell the two apart when a recipe asks for one.

How long does flour keep?

White flour keeps 6 to 8 months in an airtight container in a cool cupboard, by Kansas State University's guidance. Whole wheat flour gets the same 6 to 8 months only if it is kept in the refrigerator or freezer. Flour also draws pantry moths, so a sealed hard plastic or metal container keeps out both damp and insects.

Sources: US Code of Federal Regulations, vanilla and cacao standards; Italian Presidential Decree 187 on flour and pasta; Kansas State University Research and Extension.

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