Ingredients You Will Always Find in a Bakery
If you happen to explore a bakery in detail, you’ll always find certain ingredients stocked in it. The best bakeries are the ones that strive for high quality in their products. They also have a well-stocked commercial kitchen besides having professional bakers. For creating all the stuff from cakes to mouth-watering cookies, they require certain things in large quantities. A professional baker always knows what are the things that have to be stocked at all times. Here are the ingredients that you’ll always come across in a bakery:
Butter
Salted and unsalted butter are the two common types of butter that the bakers use. This is a type of fat that adds texture and flavor to the baked products. Butter is undoubtedly a crucial ingredient in baking. The addition of butter to a recipe can preserve the life of the baked product. It keeps all the baked goods moist for a longer period.
Eggs
Eggs are commonly available in farmers markets, but a baker can get them from a local farmer in the neighborhood. They’re of great importance in baking as they add structure and texture to the baked products. The best eggs are the ones harvested from free range chickens that are given organic diet.
Such eggs are free of dangerous additives and hormones commonly found in eggs harvested from factories or chicken farms. They’re often used as a binding agent while baking. Eggs hold a mixture together and prevent it from crumbling or falling apart after baking.
Flour
Flour is mostly categorized according to the fineness and type of grind. The lighter and more heavily ground flours are useful in making fluffy baked goods. Bakers use all-purpose flour to make baked goods of different varieties. Flour is usually prepared from milled and ground grain.
It is the basic building block for almost all the products found in a bakery. Whether it is light cookies or dense pound cakes, flour is always an essential item. Whole grain flour is coarser and denser when compared to the regular flour. This type of flour offers several health benefits and this is why most of the bakers prefer using it.
Sugar
Bakers use different types of sugars for sweetening their baked products and adding flavor. Powdered sugar or confectioner’s sugar is white in color. It goes through pulverization in order to obtain a texture that’s superfine. Bakers use this sugar in most of the baked products.
The bakers commonly use it for dusting cookies and cakes and to make frostings. Brown sugar is a combination of molasses and white sugar. It is used for creating flavorful and rich delicacies. The common white sugar is useful for sweetening dough and batter. The bakers then use this dough and batter for baking cookies, muffins, and cakes.
Leavening agents
A professional bakery always requires some type of leavening agent, such as baking soda, yeast, or baking powder. Bakers add any of these leavening agents to the dough according to the recipe’s requirement. The addition of leavening agent releases gas during the process of baking. This lends a light and fluffy texture to cakes, breads, muffins, and cookies.