4 Must-Have Ingredients in Every Baker's Pantry

 



Whether you’re a professional or beginning your journey in baking, it’s always handy to have a few key ingredients stocked in your pantry so that you can bake whenever you feel like it. Most of the ingredients that will be mentioned in this article are easy to acquire and can usually be purchased from websites that sell quality baking supplies online or at your nearest supermarket. Here are the 4 must-have ingredients in every baker’s pantry.





1) Sweeteners

 

One of the key ingredients that most baking products require are sweeteners. The usual sweeteners that one should always have on hand are brown sugar and granulated sugar. Of course, if you like to mix things up you can always opt to stock other types of sweeteners like maple sugar, sugarcane and corn syrup. Alternatively, if you prefer a healthier type of sweetener, honey is definitely the way to go. Quick tip, most of these sweeteners are easily purchasable at Essentials, a reliable online baking supplies website that sells high grade products at reasonable prices.

 

One thing that needs to be noted is that you may not always need to use sweeteners IF you are using other sweet ingredients in your recipe. A great example is if you’re using ingredients like chocolate or for the more adventurous bakers, bread spreads that already contain a decent amount of sugar such as lotus biscoff spread and ovomaltine crunchy cream.







2) Flour

 

One of the most fundamental ingredients in baking that should one hundred percent be in your pantry is flour. Used in a majority of baking recipes, flour can come in a few different varieties. The most commonly used types of flour are all-purpose flour, self-rising flour, bread flour, cake flour and whole wheat flour. If you bake more for the fun of it instead of professionally, all-purpose flour is a good choice to have in your pantry if you’d rather just buy one type of flour that can be used in a myriad of baking recipes. A great addition that you can consider adding to your pantry is corn starch as it is commonly used alongside all-purpose flour to make pastry flour.








3) Fats


With most baking recipes containing one form of fats or another, having at least one type of fats in your pantry is highly recommended. Common fats used by bakers are butter, shortening, oil and margarine. Many of these fats have a long shelf life and can be easily stocked in your pantry for a decent period of time before becoming spoilt. If you’re looking to stock one main type of fats in your pantry, butter is a solid choice. It is the most commonly used fats in many baking recipes be it for pastries, cookies, cakes and more. Furthermore, butter can be used to substitute margarine in most cases (although texture and taste of the baking product may differ slightly).







4) Leavening Agents

Leavening agents play a big role when it comes to baking goods such as cake and bread as they will affect the final look and texture of the baking goods. As such, leavening agents are a definite must-have ingredient in your pantry. The usual suspects when it comes to leavening agents are baking powder and baking soda. These two leavening agents should both be added to your pantry as both have different effects and functions. Baking soda for example, does not contain its own acid and needs to be combined with other acidic components like citrus. On the other hand, baking powder already has its own acid from the get-go which makes it a popular choice for many baking recipes. Both these agents have long shelf life so they can be kept for a long time provided that they are stored in a dry pantry at room temperature. Helpful tip, you should also consider stocking yeast if you bake bread quite often.

 






Thanks for reading!



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