Higher quality ingredients for baking - do you notice?

[MeMarmiteYouJam]

I recently made a special dessert for my partner's birthday. It was the first time I tried it and so did a few practice runs (fiddly recipe).

For the final result I used higher quality ingredients - organic, free range eggs, bourbon vanilla extract, etc. But I didn't notice the difference in taste compared to my (successful) practice runs.

Do you notice the difference when you use higher quality ingredients in baking?

Nope.

I absolutely notice high-quality, very fresh eggs — it makes a huge difference to any recipe. Would notice the difference between scraping a vanilla pod vs vanilla essence too.

I think I might just be a bit blasé about food in general, and don't have a taste for the "finer" things. I genuinely couldn't tell the difference!

Nope, we made a chocolate wedding cake for our wedding. Only the best, green & blacks 70% chocolate etc. Made the same recipe for my sister using Asda smart price choc - could not tell the difference.

Free range eggs are a must for me, but I use basic butter, flour etc with no taste difference.

I admit good, fresh eggs are probably a key factor in any baking recipe - I do love the dark, orange yolks! But I can't taste the difference.

No.

No and I doubt very much that is notice the difference between a vanilla pod and vanilla essence either.

Chef for a living

Butter not margarine
Any dark chocolate NOT milk chocolate

Fresh free range eggs
Real vanilla pods

NEVER use liquid dyes

That's all I can think of right now 😊

@MeMarmiteYouJam

I think I might just be a bit blasé about food in general, and don't have a taste for the "finer" things. I genuinely couldn't tell the difference!

It may depend on exactly what you made, too, though? I spent this summer renting a house with hens in the orchard, so it wasn’t unusual to be baking or cooking with eggs that had just been laid a few hours earlier, and it was very noticeable — but in baking terms, I’m probably talking about plainish sponge, loaf or madeira-type cakes, or frittatas, soufflés or mayonnaise, where the egg quality is more ‘exposed’.

Powder or paste dyes are infinitely better

I use organic butter and I could certainly tell the difference between my baking using that and my mum's using some animal fat marg abd battery eggs.

I also use golden caster sugar and I think it adds a richness. Probs just kidding myself tho. Fresh free range eggs are a must too but I haven't bought battery eggs, well, ever I don't think.

I use the cheaper chocolate (still 51% cocoa solids) for brownies and it is fine. I lower the sugar content tho.

I think it depends on the recipe and also what you are comparing. For example, in most recipes you will not notice the difference between very basic value butter and an expensive butter. But I can tell if something has been made with cheap margarine.

Most experiments show that margarine is better than butter for sponge.

I think America's Test Kitchen or similar demonstrated that very good imitation vanilla essence performs well relative to vanilla extract in baked goods because the nuances are lost above a certain heat.

www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/real-vanilla-extract-versus-imitation-vanilla-extract-baking-cookies-article

I never buy chopped candied peel as I find the whole pieces taste better (might be my imagination but probably because they don't come with a mass of gloopy syrup).

I can taste the difference between butter and marg if it's not 'mixed in' but having read Delia's book on the different methods of making cakes, she recommends marg as it makes the cake lighter than butter, so I do as I'm told!

I can't necessarily taste a difference between vanilla essence and the real thing, but its a long time since i used extract so I may be able to these days - however, I like to be able to see the little black dots so I use vanilla paste, which is easier than faffing about with pods, but gives you the black dots.

I use free range eggs from an animal welfare POV rather than for taste. And have never had a problem using supermarket basic flour etc.

I use Belgian chocolate buttons, just because its cheaper to buy a bulk bag of them from Amazon, than lots of smaller bars from my local CoOp, which you then have to spend time breaking up.

I'm generally pretty cheap about shopping, including food, and I always get loads of compliments on my baking. It's more about the techniques and using good flavours together for me.

I recently made some of these to sell, using very basic ingredients - water, butter, eggs and bread flour for the choux pastry; milk, eggs, cornflour, butter and vanilla for the fillings and then sugar/glucose syrup or chocolate for the toppings. The whole thing costs less than £10 to make (although many hours of work!!) but it tasted amaaaaaaazing!

No, I used Aldi cheap chocolate for my Christmas Day dessert, chocolate mousse, and it turned out really well!

I do think very fresh eggs make a difference. I have friends who used to keep hens and using eggs that were laid with in a couple of hours really added to the flavour.

I prefer unsalted butter to margarine too. My mother would say that she can tell the difference between different brands (I do not mean types) of sugar but I could not for the life of me.

Flour, sugar - no. Cheap is fine. But I do use golden caster sugar if possible, I just prefer it.
Eggs must be very fresh.
Butter, not margarine. Admittedly you get a slightly better rise to a Victoria sponge with a high quality buttery spread, but the taste with proper butter is worth it, IMO.
Chocolate, it definitely matters! Cadburys doesn't melt. Cheap supermarket chocolate is fine, as long as it's not got much vegetable oil in (preferably none) as it stops it from melting. I'd rather get cheap cooking chocolate than cadburys TBH, at least it's designed to melt. I usually use M&S or Morrisons own brand standard chocolate, both fine.
Vanilla - I use the decent vanilla paste. CBA scraping out the pods. Or, I use vanilla sugar, I make my own (the pods seem the last forever & I just keep refilling the jar).

I'm convinced that better quality flour makes cakes rise more.

Yes to fresh eggs, decent chocolate and butter over margarine always.

I can usually tell egg freshness.
Only other thing is aldi 'perfect for cakes' changes the texture and flavour. You can tell it isn't butter. But for DD's 'perfect five year old's baking' it's er perfect! Sorry. Gets coat.

Making bread it's hugely obvious in the grain and the flavour and texture and consistency when using a higher quality flour. I never had bothered before, always using the Lidl flour (30p/kilo), then was caught short one day and went to Waitrose and grabbed the first bag I found (£1/kilo) and was amazed at the difference. Otherwise I wouldn't know that's DWs department.

hilarious 😂

There's so many other factors (skill of baker, oven) that you'd have to do a blind side by side comparison to get a definite answer, but for cakes, pies, biscuits, puddings etc, I'd say most people won't notice any difference, and be perfectly happy with the cheaper ingredients.

I always use butter, free range eggs and dark chocolate, but it all comes from Aldi or Lidl, including the 30 pence dark chocolate, and it's all really nice.

I once did rocky road for work with these sorts of ingredients and it went down really well, including a comment about how good the chocolate was, from a colleague who is very 'Waitrose and Farmers market', even though it was the 30 p from Aldi type.

I noticed a different when I started using an electric whisk, I used to use a rotary one that you turn the handle for and there's a huge difference.
I also noticed a difference when I bought 00 Italian flour to make pizza but I use standard ingredients when baking ie I don't bother with caster sugar.

I make my own bread, and when bread flour was short in March/April the only stuff I could buy was Aldi - and the quality of the bread suffered. I usually love Aldi products but their bread flour isn't great.

You used to have to sieve flour to separate it as it clumped together. I think it has drying ingredients in it nowadays to keep it powdery and some I find make a drier mix so I prefer organic flour. Eggs vary a lot in size. Very large eggs can give a too soft mixture and is not necessarily better.