Baking - Learning from the start.

[TheGreatWave]

My dd is embarking on her Duke of Edinburgh award, she has decided that she wants to do baking as her skill element. I want to make sure that she covers all the techniques involved with baking and cover these within the recipes.

I have tried googling but can't quite find what I am after. I want something that tells me different methods and then recipes that include these. Does anyone know where I am best to find this please, either on the web or in print?

Thank you. We are starting tomorrow with cupcakes (starting from the very basic, even though it won't be new)

Thank you

[Hassled]

I'm struggling to think where/how you'd see a method without it being part of a recipe. Do you want a "this is how you cream butter and sugar" sort of thing?
In terms of basic but thorough baking instructions, you can't go wrong with Delia. Her recipes are very clear and precise.

[wowfudge]

Delia and Mary Berry are brilliant. Have a look at Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes. For basic techniques, there's always YouTube.

[TheGreatWave]

Thank you. I'll look into Delia - I mean more along the lines of to learn to knead I would need a bread recipe, so just making sure that at the end she will have covered everything at least once.

[TheGreatWave]

And Mary Berry

[Elouera]

I also find the BBC website 'techniques' section is very good:

www.bbc.co.uk/food/techniques

Otherwise, is she allowed to attend an actual class? Some areas have local community cooking classes. There is the waitrose cooking school, but I'm unsure if they have a beginners class of basics, seems to be more a one-off class to cook a certain thing.

[heartheal]

www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/baking-beginners

[pastabest]

DK step by step baking

This is a great book for what you are looking for.

I think it would be virtually impossible to cover 'all' baking techniques as there will be thousands and thousands, but the boom above will cover the main ones.

I would start by splitting it into 4 main sections

Pastry
Bread
Cakes
Biscuits

And then pick perhaps two different recipes for each section to show a range of methods.

So e.g

Pastry

Quiche, tart or pie of some sort with shortcrust pastry (demonstrates rubbing in, blind baking, hot/cold water pastry, egg washing etc)

Eclairs or profiteroles for Choux pastry (demonstrates making a roux, making evenly shaped pastries, filling and icing etc.

Once you have done that for each section you should be somewhere close to having covered most of the major baking skills.

[OchAyeThaNoo]

Can I just recommend when baking sponges such as cupcakes etc, don't use the 110g flour, 110g sugar, 110g butter, 2 eggs.... recipe. Crack open the eggs and weigh them. If they come to 117g for example, use that same weight for the other ingredients. Perfect sponges every time.

[karmakameleon]

For techniques followed by lots of recipes where you can use them, I find the Richard Bertinet bread and pastry books very good. He doesn’t bake cakes though

[fishonabicycle]

My son did baking as part of his doe. I helped him choose recipes which demonstrated different skills, got him to copy the recipes into a word file, with a photo of his end result. This was fine - I can remember him doing pizza, scones, malt loaf, soda bread, lemon drizzle, bread rolls, some sort of biscuit based thing etc.

[FickleTickle]

My daughter did Bread Making and really I think, as a pp said, it's about reading many versions and finding what works for you. Mary Berry is a super starting point. My DD did white (yeast) bread, Brown bread, Foccacia, tea bread, pizza dough and Naan Bread. I had dreams of coming home to trays of lovely freshly baked offerings but her interest petered out after the project was complete.

[kateandme]

i would make sure she knows how to do the different pastrys.
then knowing breads.
then the different types of sponges.their are lots of different types of spnges and the method to make them differs.
then biscuits.
then icings.again different methods and ingredients for them.
their is also the diff types of mirangues.
andthen when you have them look for recipes.
maybe even look up the bake off.they have lots of techniques they have to try and cover each week dont they?

[kateandme]

also you might like to both check this out as its a good twitter event run by one of the contestants.
they cover a new bake each time and everyone joins inand posts pictures.it might if anything esle gve you some hany hints for recipes and then the tech involved.its a lovely group aswell

[TheGreatWave]

Thank you everybody for all the advice, I am adding some more things to my store cupboard, I managed to pick a book up from the library, not any of the ones recommended but I might have look online and see if there is any I can reserve.