How to make Buttermilk

1. Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar to a measuring cup.
2. Fill up the milk to the 1 cup mark.
3. Let the mixture sit for 5 minutes.
4. If using sour cream or plain yogurt you’ll want to measure the proper amounts and stir them together before adding to your recipe.

Vegan Buttermilk or Dairy-Free Buttermilk Substitutes

My solution: make it as stated in the recipe below (1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice + 1 scant cup almond milk, coconut milk, soy milk or other nondairy milk) and just add it to the recipe. This will ensure the leavening works as it’s supposed to.

Note that this method won’t look “curdled” because nondairy milk doesn’t have the same properties dairy milk does, but the acid in the vinegar or lemon juice will do it’s job.

Buttermilk Uses

There are many ways to use buttermilk for flavor, like in my Yellow Cake recipe, ranch dressing or other vinaigrettes, and often fried chicken is soaked in it to make it tender.

When it’s called for in recipes on my site, it’s often required so use this homemade buttermilk recipe to make some of my favorite baked goods:

• Buttermilk Biscuits
• Pumpkin Bread or Banana Bread (my mom labeled it as “sour milk”)
• Pancakes are super fluffy when you use it

Easy Brown Sugar Substitute

We’ve all been there: you’re making a recipe and realize you don’t have an ingredient. It’s the worst – especially if you don’t want to go to the grocery store (again). It’s nice to know some easy baking substitutions when this happens. A lot of ingredients you bake with regularly can be made at home or substituted with something different.

This recipe will tell you how to make a substitute for brown sugar – with just 2 ingredients!

2 Ingredeints Needed

Homemade brown sugar is one of the things you can make at home! It’s easy to do with just two ingredients:

• Granulated Sugar – also called white sugar
• Molasses – unsulferd molasses is best

How do you make brown sugar?

• Simply add 1 tablespoon of molasses to 1 cup of white sugar and stir. This will create a light brown sugar substitute!
• For dark brown sugar, simply add more molasses.

Why Do You Heat Treat Flour?

If you’ve ever made edible raw cookie dough, you might already know that you shouldn’t use eggs, but did you know you shouldn’t use raw flour either? Luckily, there’s an easy way to bake flour, so it’s safe to use in all of your favorite edible raw dough recipes. I’m showing you how to do it!

The process of making flour does not kill bacteria. Usually, this is not a problem because flour in recipes is cooked, whether in cakes, cookies, breading, etc. The heat kills the bacteria, so there isn’t a worry. Raw flour can harbor the same kinds of bacteria, and so it needs to be cooked.

Luckily, it’s super easy to heat treat flour, so it’s safe to use in edible cookie dough recipes, which are one of my favorite things! It takes all the worry away from using raw flour and only takes about five minutes. 

How to heat treat flour

• Preheat the oven to 350°F.
• Spread the amount of flour you need for your recipe on a cookie sheet.
• Once the oven is heated, bake the flour for five minutes.
• Cool it on the sheet before adding it to your recipe. 

Tip: You can bake flour ahead of time. Once it’s cooled, store it in an airtight container so you can use it later.

What are the types of chocolate?

There are so many different types of chocolate for baking: baking bars, chocolate chips, melting chocolate. This post is going to talk about what they all are and what they’re good for.

Flavors of chocolate are all about percentage: the percentage of cacao vs sugar and how much milk solids there are.

1. Unsweetened Chocolate which is 100% cacao and no sugar. You don’t want to eat it plain! This chocolate is has a darker color than all the others.
2. Bittersweet Chocolate, which is around 70% cacao and 30% sugar (also called dark chocolate).
3. Semisweet Chocolate has around 60% cacao and 40% sugar and is also called dark chocolate.
4. Milk Chocolate has under 40% cacao but also contains milk fats and sometimes vanilla.
5. White Chocolate has no cacao at all and often isn’t considered “real” chocolate!
6. Blonde Chocolate is white chocolate that has been cooked at a low temperature to caramelize the sugars and milk (like when you brown butter). It’s a light beige in color and has a deeper flavor.
7. Ruby Chocolate is the newest type of chocolate. It’s made from ruby cocoa beans grown in Ecuador and has a pale pink hue. It’s said to have a sweet, fruity taste with sour notes. It’s about 47% cacao and 26% milk.

Baking Bars

Also called baking squares, baking bars are chocolate you use for baking. These aren’t usually bars you’d eat (i.e. a candy bar). Baking bars are usually melted and added to brownies or other recipes.

You’ll find baking bars in the baking aisle of the grocery store, usually on the top shelf. They come in Unsweetened, Semi-Sweet, White and often German Chocolate (which I think of as close to milk chocolate). The mainstream brands you’ll find in regular grocery stores are Bakers and Ghiradelli. They’re more of a high-quality chocolate that will taste better in recipes.

Baking bars are great for melting and adding to recipes or chopping and adding in place of chocolate chips. They’re also great for dipping chocolate covered strawberries or shortbread and will give a nice glossy finish when dried.

Chocolate Chips

Chocolate chips are the most common form of chocolate. These are sold in the baking aisle and come in lots of different flavors, and they often come as “chunks” instead of chips. I use these in my Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe.

There are too many brands of chocolate chip to list, but I highly recommend buying one of four brands: Ghiradelli, Guittard, Nestle, or Trader Joe’s. I do not recommend store brand chocolate chips – especially if you’re going to melt them.

Chocolate Chips have a stabilizer in them to keep them from melting completely in the oven – that’s what makes them stay chips – and when they are melted they tend to be a bit cloudy, so they’re not recommended for dipping or bark or things like that.

When adding chocolate chips to recipes, most of the time the flavor doesn’t matter. As long as you’re not melting the chocolate chips into a recipe (i.e. ganache) you can use milk, semi-sweet, bittersweet and white chocolate chips interchangeably in recipes.

Melting Wafers/Candy Melts

There are two different kinds of melting wafers: chocolate and colorful.

Chocolate Melting Wafers are small disk-like pieces of chocolate that are preferable for melting (over chocolate chips) because they have no stabilizers in them. These are great for dipping truffles and candy or whenever you need to melt chocolate for baking, like when making easy chocolate bark.

Mostly they come in semi-sweet and white chocolate flavor and are sold in the baking aisle of the grocery store where you find the baking bars. The most common melting wafer you’ll find is Ghirardelli brand (or store brands, if you’re shopping at Walmart). They come in pouches or sometimes a contained cup you can melt in.

Do not confuse chocolate melting wafers with the “chocolate” melts you get in the craft aisle or at the craft store (i.e. Wilton brand). While those melts do have a chocolate “flavor” they aren’t chocolate in the sense of the kind you find in the baking aisle.

Chocolate melts are more often colorful and perfect for making candy or truffles when you want that colorful exterior – but the flavor isn’t deep and rich like true chocolate. If you’re making something chocolatey – stick to the kind in the baking aisle.

Almond Bark or Candiquik

Also in the baking aisle are large blocks of chocolate that are engineered for melting and dipping, often referred to as almond bark.

Almond Bark isn’t a thing – it’s a brand. Same with Candiquik – these are brands of melting chocolate. These products are perfect for dipping truffles and pretzels, etc., because they melt smooth and without issue. These blocks are on par with the melts described above, but just a different shape. You’ll also see store brands of this as well. All of them live on that top shelf, alongside the melts and bars.

Of all the block melting chocolate like these, Candiquik is the best tasting, Almond Bark second. Don’t even bother with the store brand! Candiquik also comes in a handy tray you can use for melting.

What is yeast?

Yeast is a living single-cell microorganism that is all around us. Ancient Egyptians are credited for discovering yeast when wild yeast found its way into their ancient bread dough and, like magic, the dough puffed up or “leavened” all on its own creating a lighter, fluffier and more delicious bread. Prior to that “bread” was hard and flat. Imagine how happy that discovery was!¹

Since that discovery, bread makers figured out ways to cultivate yeast and use it to make more delicious types of bread often through the use of starters which are commonly used in artisanal baking today.

As science progressed smart people figured out how to make different types of baking yeast shelf-stable and reliable which resulted in those little packets and jars of dry yeast you see in the grocery store.

What does yeast do?

Like all living things, yeast needs to eat to survive and when it’s used in dough it likes to munch on the sugars. If no sugar is available the yeast will consume starches, alcohol (hello, beer brewing!) and other things and turn it into sugar (also known as glucose).

When it processes the sugars, yeast produces carbon dioxide and ethanol gases which, in turn, is responsible for the rise, or leavening, of the bread. Without yeast a loaf of bread would not be a loaf but flat and hard and not as appetizing instead.

Yeast needs the right environment to create the best possible baked good and so the type of yeast, how it’s “proofed” or activated, the amount of sugars available for it to grow and air temperature are just a few of the variables that can affect how well yeast works.  

Types of Yeast for Baking

There are many kinds of yeast used for different purposes so we are focusing on types of baker’s yeast as that’s what is commonly used for home baking. 

We are focusing on dry yeast, which is what you find at the grocery store and the type of yeast I use for all of my yeast recipes on this blog.

• Active dry yeast is most commonly used in home baking and is sold in either small packages or little jars at the grocery store. The actual yeast is stored in the granules and is reactivated when combined with warm water. 
• Instant yeast is like an amped-up version of active dry yeast and packaged the same way. It has a higher concentration of active yeast and doesn’t require activation with water. Instead, it can be mixed into the dough without being activated first. If you compare it with the dry active yeast, you’ll notice the granules are smaller. Instant yeast is sometimes referred to as rapid-rise yeast and is often used for bread that is made in a bread machine.
• Bread Machine Yeast is another type of instant yeast that has smaller granules so that it will dissolve quicker with the wet ingredients and doesn’t need the proofing step. It often has a longer shelf life than other yeast.

How to Knead Dough

If you’ve gone to the trouble to buy the right kind of yeast for your recipe, activating the yeast according to the instructions and mixing all of your ingredients to make the dough it’s a good idea to know how to knead the dough. 

Kneading the dough is a crucial step in baking as it changes structure of the dough so the yeast can do it’s part in making the bread rise. Depending on the recipe there may be specific kneading instructions but, in general, this is how you knead bread:

• Place the dough on a worksurface dusted with flour.
• Gather up the dough and, using the heels of your hands press and stretch the dough away from you.
• Fold it back on itself and press and stretch again. Every so often turn the dough so you are pressing and stretching the whole ball of dough.
• You know when you’ve kneaded the dough enough when it’s no longer sticky and the dough has an elasticity.

Kneading the dough lengthens and stretches the gluten in the dough giving it structure. When the dough rises this structure creates space for the yeast to emit the gases that causes the bread to rise. 

Where is the Best Place to Let Dough Rise?

The best place to let dough rise is a warm place. Most often your kitchen counter is the best place, but if your kitchen is cold it’s better to find a warmer place to leave it. At least 80 degrees F is the ideal temperature, but if it’s cooler it will just take a little longer for the bread to rise. If it’s very cold a warm oven is a good place, too, but just be sure to monitor the temperature.

Your recipe, if it’s a well written one, should indicate what the dough should look like since the amount of time for the dough to rise will vary based on what the temperature of your kitchen is. “Doubled in size” is a common visual cue, but always check your recipe instructions to be sure.

Why didn’t my bread rise?

• Is your yeast expired? Always check the expiration date on the package before you use it.
• If your yeast wasn’t expired, was it in an opened package exposed to moisture and air? Yeast is perishable and will go bad quickly if it’s been exposed to too much moisture and air so even if it’s still within its expiry date it can go bad if not stored properly.
• Expired yeast means the yeast has died. When you activate the yeast, you should see bubbles and foam form in the bowl of water (if using active dry yeast). If this doesn’t happen it’s probably because the yeast has gone bad.
• Was your water too hot when you activated the yeast? Water that is hotter than 139°F can kill the yeast. If other ingredients in your dough are hot they can kill the yeast, too (looking at you, melted butter).
• Did you use the type of yeast called for in the recipe? Remember, different kinds of yeast are not always interchangeable.
• Did you forget to add any ingredients in the recipe? Or did you miss measure? Yeast needs the right environment in order to work and so any changes in the recipe amounts can impact how it reacts.
• Did you knead the dough enough? The gluten in the bread needs to be worked so that it has structure. Dough that is not kneaded (or not kneaded enough) does not have the right structure and won’t work right with the yeast to get a nice rise (or any lift at all).

If you’ve ever had chocolate seize up on you or not melt properly, you know how annoying it can be. So, I’m showing you the best ways to melt chocolate so you can do it every time without problems.

• How to melt in the microwave vs. a double boiler.
• How to melt chocolate chips plus other types of chocolate, including how to melt white chocolate chips, so you get smooth chocolate every time.
• I’m sharing my best tips for salvaging seized or overheated chocolate.
• Plus, a few more secrets so you can melt chocolate like a pro!

Melting Chocolate in the Microwave

You can melt chocolate in the microwave and it’s easy and fast, but it can also burn if you’re not careful.

In general, the best way to melt chocolate in the microwave is to first set the power to 50%. This will make it easier to not overcook it. Place chocolate in a microwave safe bowl and melt the chocolate in 30 second intervals, stirring between each. Using this stop-and-stir method will ensure you don’t burn it.

Tip: For easy clean-up, use a small plastic dixie bowl. They are microwave-safe!

Depending on the kind of chocolate you are melting, here are some additional tips to keep in mind:

• Baking bars and almond bark: Always follow the package’s recommendations for melting these kinds of chocolate. Different brands will vary, so always double-check.
• Chocolate chips: I like to add a teaspoon of oil or Crisco when I melt chocolate chips. When you melt them in the microwave, the oil helps the melting process. You can use this same process to melt white chocolate chips.
• Chocolate bars (not baking bars): Follow the same instructions for chocolate chips, but omit the oil or Crisco.

Melt Chocolate on the stove (double boiler)

The double-boiler method for melting chocolate is easy but the benefit is that it’s harder to burn the chocolate than the microwave method.

To make a double boiler, all you do is place a heat-proof bowl on top of a pan of barely simmering water. The water should not touch the bowl’s bottom. That way, the heat from the steam will heat the bowl creating an indirect heat that gently melts the chocolate. This makes it less likely that it will burn.

• The bowl must fit in the pan without gaps to prevent water from splashing up into the chocolate, which can cause it to seize up.
• To melt the chocolate, place it in the bowl and stir it. The heat from the steam in the pan will melt it. 
• How to melt white chocolate chips: I prefer to use the double-boiler method for white chocolate because white chocolate has more sugar and can burn easily.
• The double-boiler process is great when you want pretty glossy chocolate – it’s a gentler way to melt it, and it’s easier to control the heat to achieve that result.

What is brown butter?

The first time I had this butter I was in awe. Cooking the butter until it’s brown gives it a nutty and rich flavor that regular butter just doesn’t have. Nope, brown butter isn’t just burned butter!

I’ve used this in so many recipes – including one of my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipes – and it is such an easy ingredient.

When you cook butter slowly it turns brown and dark and golden. The butter concentrates as the milk solids turn dark and the result has a slightly nutty flavor.

What butter is best?

The best kind of butter to use when browning butter is unsalted. Salted butter can ruin the flavor, if the salt gets too concentrated as it cooks. I highly recommend using unsalted butter, also called sweet cream butter.

When it comes to brand, you all know that Challenge Butter is my favorite, but regardless of what you use, be sure to use a top-quality brand. Don’t use the cheap store brand – the browning only concentrates the flavor. It’s like when you cook with wine; you want to use one you’d actually drink (or spread on bread, in the case of butter).

How to brown butter:

• Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Let it melt slowly.
• Once the butter melts, it will start to boil and foam.
• You’ll be able to see below all the foam, that the butter is still yellow at first. As you cook it it will turn from a light yellow to darker yellow, then to light amber to golden brown.
• It will foam quite a bit during cooking, so be sure to continue stirring occasionally and not leave it alone. Once it gets to a nice dark amber color, it’s done cooking. Be careful – butter can go from amber to burnt VERY fast – so be sure and watch it. Once it turns brown, take it off the heat.
• The milk fats in the butter will sink to the bottom and look like silt – that’s the good stuff and totally normal!