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- Insider spoke with "Bake Off" winner Giuseppe Dell'Anno about his best tips for common issues.
- Turing the oven temperature down and using aluminum foil can help produce a more even bake.
- Dell'Anno suggests weighing ingredients instead of measuring and adding dry ingredients in stages.
Few people know how to swiftly handle a baking crisis like the contestants on "The Great British Baking Show" (also known as "The Great British Bake Off"), where one wrong move can get you sent home.
Speaking to Insider ahead of the release of his first cookbook, "Giuseppe's Italian Bakes," season-12 winner Giuseppe Dell'Anno shared his top tips for fixing and avoiding common baking problems.
Baking low and slow can ensure the outside and inside are evenly done
There's nothing worse than taking the time to mix up a dessert only to pull it out of the oven with burnt edges and a raw center. As a solution, Dell'Anno suggested setting the oven temperature lower and leaving your bakes in a little longer.
The baker said if he was making a thick genoise sponge, for example, he'd reduce the temperature from about 350 degrees Fahrenheit (the standard for many cakes) to 320 and bake it for an hour.
Cover your bakes to prevent a burnt exterior
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Even with the oven set to a lower temperature, you may notice the top of your cake getting too dark or the edges of your pie crusts turning golden when the rest needs longer to bake.
Another way to keep parts from baking too quickly is to simply cover the areas. Dell'Anno recommended using aluminum foil or baking/parchment paper.
"That protects the top from browning too much and gives time for the heat to soak into the core of the sponge," he said.
Get fancy with a cake belt for a perfect bake
For cakes that are always moist and never dry, Dell'Anno recommended using a baking belt. The tool typically costs about $10 and helps evenly distribute the heat.
He said it "sounds very fancy, but it's "effectively a towel" you dampen and wrap around the outside of your cake tin.
The belt keeps the edges slightly cooler so the exterior of the cake doesn't overbake before the center is done.
It's best to have separate pans for baking and roasting
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If you find your cakes, brownies, or cookies are always sticking, you might want to stop using the same pans to roast things like potatoes.
"When you use it for roasting, the oils and the fats that you use for roasting tend to polymerize and create that sort of sticky stuff that you can never get rid of on the edges of your pan," Dell'Anno told Insider. "And then when you recycle it as a cake pan, you are almost guaranteed that your cake won't come out."
Instead, reserve certain tins for baking and keep a separate stash of pans for roasting veggies and meats.
The easiest way to tell if a cake is done is by using the skewer test
When it's time for your cake to come out of the oven, use a skewer, toothpick, or narrow utensil to check the center of the bake. It should come out clean when the center is fully cooked.
Some baked goods may have intentionally gooey centers filled with fruits or other ingredients, so Dell'Anno suggested testing a few different areas around the top to test for doneness.
Butter and flour are key when it comes to preventing sticking
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To keep things from sticking to the pan, you don't need specialty nonstick sprays, according to Dell'Anno. His method that "never fails" just involves butter and flour.
He melts a bit of butter and uses a pastry brush to coat the baking tin. Then he sprinkles in a couple of spoonfuls of flour, turning the tin around and tapping until it covers the layer of butter.
Tap out the excess flour before adding your batter, and you have a simple nonstick coating.
To avoid flat cookies, go easy on the sugar
Cookies sometimes go flat in the oven, leaving you with thin, brittle sweets rather than a soft and chewy dessert.
Although the Italian "Bake Off" star said he isn't as practiced making US-style cookies, he told Insider that there are usually two culprits when it comes to flat bakes.
The more obvious thing you can check first is if you've added enough of the rising agent, like baking powder, the recipe calls for.
But Dell'Anno also said "batters that are particularly rich in sugar tend to collapse more easily than others."
As the sugar melts in the high temperatures of an oven, it can compromise the structure created by the other ingredients and cause the cookie to undergo a "pancake" effect, leaving it thin and flat.
Don't rush the proofing process
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Don't cut proofing (or proving) time short — especially when making bread and other doughs that need time to rest before baking. The dough needs to rest before shaping and baking so that the yeast can activate, making the dough expand and rise.
This can be difficult if you're in a place with high temperatures — like the tent on "Bake Off" — or low temperatures.
To speed things up a little, in high temperatures, you may want to move the dough somewhere slightly cooler to proof. But if the climate is cold, Dell'Anno recommended turning on just the oven light, not the oven, and placing the covered dough inside.
He told Insider the subtle heat from the light is just the right amount to move the proofing process along.
Avoid overmixing your batters and doughs
Some mixtures, especially for light cakes and crumbly cookies, can become tough or dry when they're overmixed.
"You've got to stop as soon as the whole thing comes together, because if you start properly kneading it, then you're starting to create too much gluten that will end up generating tough biscuits," Dell'Anno said.
He added the only way to prevent overmixing is to watch carefully and stop as soon as the ingredients of the batter are just combined.
If you have add-ins, like citrus zest or chocolate chips, you may have to fold them in gently to avoid overmixing.
Prevent lumpy batter by adding your dry ingredients in stages
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You may wonder why your batter looks lumpy, even after using a stand mixer or stirring for a while.
Lumps aren't always avoidable, but to avoid them, the baker suggested adding your dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in small increments — about 1/3 or 1/4 at a time.
Even if your batter looks a little lumpy, Dell'Anno said it doesn't mean your dessert will be ruined.
"In the worst-case scenario, we might end up with a little clump of flour somewhere in the sponge. Big deal. So what?" he told Insider. "Nobody's perfect."
You only need to sift your dry ingredients when the recipe calls for it
You may be able to reduce the chances of lumpy batter by sifting in your dry ingredients, but you don't have to break out your sieve every time you want homemade cookies or cake.
"As a home baker, I personally never do. I mean, who's got the time to sift the flour twice before you make a biscuit? Come on, let's be practical here," Dell'Anno told Insider. "I would say that as a general rule, only sift when the recipe asks you to — it's not always. And if you don't, it's not gonna be the end of the world."
Keep the temperature of different ingredients in mind
Temperatures should be at the top of your mind before you even preheat the oven, especially when using ingredients like eggs and butter.
Most recipes will say whether the butter should be cold, melted, or softened, and some may note if the eggs should be at room temperature. These two ingredients can impact the structure of a bake, for better or worse.
For cake batters, brioche doughs, or even meringues, you'll want the ingredients to be at room temperature.
For delicate doughs, like shortcrust pastry, Dell'Anno said he makes sure his butter and eggs are very cold and even pops the flour and sugar in the freezer for about half an hour.
"I've got very warm hands, and I keep my hands under the cold water for five minutes before I actually start kneading it," he told Insider.
If nothing else, Dell'Anno wants home bakers to weigh their ingredients
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If home bakers take nothing else from Dell'Anno's upcoming cookbook, he wants everyone to weigh their ingredients.
Weighing is more exact than measuring since you can accidentally cram an extra couple of tablespoons in a cup of flour, potentially compromising the structure of the bake.
The baker told Insider that kitchen scales only cost about $10 to $15, and using them to weigh your ingredients gives you a better shot at successful, delicious bakes.
Giuseppe Dell'Anno's first cookbook "Giuseppe's Italian Bakes" is out November 22.
'Great British Baking Show' winner shares 13 tips to avoid and fix common baking problems
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