All-Purpose Flour This is a wheat flour that is made from the milling of hard wheat

or a mixture of hard and soft wheat. It can be bleached or not and is often enriched with
iron and the vitamins folic acid, riboflavin, folic acid, niacin. All-purpose flour is
commonly used in homes for noodles, cookies, cakes, quick breads, pastries, and
certain yeast breads.

Amaranth Flour Amaranth flour is milled from amaranth seeds, and since it lacks
gluten, it can only be used in yeast breads if it is combined with a wheat flour. Many
people enjoy this flour due to its strong flavor that is particularly well suited for savory
pastries or breads. It also gives quick breads a smooth texture.

Ascorbic Acid More commonly known as vitamin C, ascorbic acid is added to bread
flour because it enables bread dough to gain a greater volume when it is baked into a
loaf.

Baking Baking is the process of using dry heat to cook food. It is usually performed
in an oven.

Baking Pan A baking pan is a pan of any shape or size that is used to bake cookies,
pies, breads, biscuits, cakes, or specialty baked goods. Today, they are usually made of
light- to heavy-gauge steel, although heavy-gauge aluminum is used in the construction
of two-layer, insulated baking pans. Mid-gauge aluminum is most often used for the
pans that test kitchens rely upon to define baking standards such as time and
temperature.See also definitions for cookie pan, nonstick, baking sheet, jelly-roll pan,
and insulated pan.

Baking Powder Baking powder is a product used for leavening that is a combination
of baking soda and either citric or tartaric acid or a mixture of the two. This powder,
when it is wet and hot, will react without acid from other ingredients in the food that is
baked. Home-use baking powder typically has two kinds of acid, one that reacts to
liquids in the baking dough and the other reacts when baking heats the product. The
baked goods are made lighter via the carbon dioxide that is produced by the powder.
Over time, baking powder can lose its strength, and it should be tested if it has been
sitting on the shelf for a while. Good baking powder will bubble strongly when one
teaspoon of it is mixed with one-quarter cup of hot water.

Baking Sheet A baking sheet is a rigid metal sheet, often with one or more turned-
up edges, that can be used to bake biscuits, breads, cookies, and other goods. There
are several types of baking sheets. Dark, heavy-gauge baking pans are used to bake
specialty goods with crisp crusts. Test kitchens will use shiny, heavy-gauge aluminum to
bake and brown evenly. Soft-cookies, rolls, and tender-crusted breads are often baked
using insulated sheets, which are two sheets of aluminum with a space for air in
between them. See also cookie sheet, jelly-roll pan, and insulated bakeware.

Baking Soda Baking soda reacts with an acid when it is wet to produce carbon
dioxide and lighten baked goods. The wet, acidic ingredients that typically cause this
reaction with baking soda in a batter include buttermilk, sour milk, citrus juices,
chocolate, vinegar, or honey, and the reaction will begin immediately when liquids are
added to the dry ingredients. Baking soda is a bicarbonate of soda that is created from
trona, a mineral that is mined in Green River, Wyoming.

Baking Stone A baking stone is a plate of stone or other unglazed, tile-like material.
It can be round or rectangular, and it is used to help simulate the properties of a brick
oven floor in a home oven. Place the stone on the lowest rack in the oven and only
preheat the stone if the manufacturer recommends it. The food that is to be baked can
be placed directly on the stone or in a pan and then on a stone.

Barley Flour Barley flour has a sweet taste and it gives cakes, quick breads, and
cookies moisture and a light texture. It is milled from hulled barley and it is low in gluten.

Beating Beating is the process of stirring or whipping with a spoon, electric mixture,
wire whisk, or beater to create a smooth mixture of ingredients.

Blend To blend ingredients is to mix two or more of them together with a spoon or
whisk or an appliance such as a blender, mixer, or processor.

Bloom 1.) In bread, bloom is the brown color found in the crust of a well-baked loaf.

2.) In chocolate, bloom refers to pale, grayish streaks or blotches that appear on the
surface of chocolate that demonstrates that separation of cocoa butter from the
chocolate itself. It occurs when chocolate has been stored in an environment that is too
warm, but it does not mean that the chocolate is no longer usable.

Bran Bran is the name of the outer layers of a grain kernel that are found just below
the hull of the grain. Dietary fiber and other nutrients can be added to cereals and baked
goods with bran, which makes up approximately 14.5 percent of all types of whole-
wheat flour. The bran that results when bran layers are removed from a grain kernel
during milling is known as millers bran.

Bread Flour Bread flour is the preferred flour for those who use bread machines to
bake bread. It is an unbleached wheat flour that is high in protein, which aids in the
development of better yeast bread. It is good to use a bread flour that is enriched with
various vitamins and minerals.

Brownie This favorite desert is a chewy, dense, cake-like cookie that is sliced into
bars for serving. Usually, brownies are chocolate-flavored and colored brown, hence
their name.

Buckwheat Flour Despite its name, buckwheat is not a relative of the grain known
as wheat. Buckwheat is originally from Russia, and its distinctive flavor is treasured in
pancakes and other baked goods like multi-grain breads. Appropriately, Russian blini
made from buckwheat flour, as are groats and kasha. Buckwheat flour has not gluten
and it is created from the grinding of hulled buckwheat seeds.

Bulgur Bulgur refers to whole-wheat kernels after they have been steamed, dried,
and cracked. Bulgur can be ground up and made into flour, or it can be soaked or
cooked for addition to baked goods.

Butter According to U.S. standards, butter is comprised of 80 percent milk fat and 20
percent milk solids and water. It is created through churning cream into a semi-solid,
and it can be salted or unsalted. Bakers use butter on account of its flavor and its facility
for creating crispness, flaky layers, flavors, tenderness, and a golden-brown color.

Cake Flour Cake flour is a low-protein flour that is silky and fine in texture that can
be used for pastries, cakes, cookies, and certain breads.
Canning & Pickling Salt This is a salt that can be used just like table salt in baking.
It is a pure, granulated salt that has no free-flowing agents or other additives, and it may
cake if it is exposed in an environment that has a greater than 75 percent relative
humidity. See also salt.

Chocolate This favorite and familiar food and ingredient gets its name from xocolatl,
an Aztec word that means bitter water. Many forms of chocolate are used in baking,
but whether it is unsweetened, milk, bittersweet, or semi-sweet chocolate, all of these
forms use a base of cocoa liquor that is derived from ground, roasted, and blended
small pieces of the cacao bean called nibs. See also the other types of chocolate listed
in this glossary.

Chop To chop is to cut up food into tiny bits.

Cocoa Butter The portion of the cacao bean that is fat is known as cocoa butter.

Cocoa Powder Fermented, roasted, dried, and cracked cacao beans can be made
into an unsweetened powder called cacao powder. The nibs or small pieces of the
cacao beans are ground up in order to make this powder, and 75 percent of the cacao
butter is extracted to form the thick paste that is known as cocoa butter. Dutch cocoa is
a special cocoa powder with a neutralized acidity due to its having been treated with
alkali.

Combine To combine ingredients is to mix them together.

Confectioners/Powdered Sugar One of the most widely used baking ingredients is

confectioners or powdered sugar, which is a granulated sugar crushed into a fine
powder and combined with cornstarch. Only about 3 percent of the final product is
cornstarch, which helps prevent the confectioners sugar from clumping.

Convection Cooking Convection cooking is a method used to cook certain foods

faster, and it also allows the baker to cook a larger quantity of food and use multiple
baking racks all at the same time. In convection cooking, a fan will circulate heated air
continually in the oven, and the thoroughness of the cooking means that convection
cooking often requires lower oven temperatures.
Convection Oven The convection oven has a fan to circulate hot air around that
which is being cooked on a continual basis, allowing the baking of several products on
different racks all at once. A convection oven can be either gas or electric, may not
need preheating, and the temperature required to cook a product in a conventional oven
can often be reduced by 25 degrees in a convection oven.

Cookie Deriving its name from the Dutch word koekje or little cake, a cookie is a
sweet, hand-held small cake with a flour base.

Cookie Pan ?Cookie pans are flat, rectangular pans made of rigid steel or aluminum.
Its four sides will all have a lip of 5/83/4 inches high to keep the cookies from sliding off
when it is moved. This lip also makes it easier to take the pan out of the oven. In many
cases, the cookie pans used for home baking are actually jelly roll pans.

Cookie Sheet Ranging in size from 10x8 inches to 20x15 inches, cookie sheets are
flat, rectangular baking pans made of rigid aluminum or steel. Two of the four sides on a
cookie sheet will have no raised edge in order to facilitate the removal of baked cookies.

Cool To cool hot foods is to reduce their temperature until they are neither very hot
nor very cold.

Cooling Rack Baked goods are often cooled on a cooling rack, which is typically a
rectangular grid made of thick wire with feet or legs to raise it off the countertop and
allow cooler air to circulate all around the finished good. Usually, baked goods will be
cooled for a short while on their pan before they are removed and put on a cooling rack.
After they are done cooling on this rack, they can be placed in storage or frozen. The
exceptions to this rule are yeast breads, which are usually transferred from a baking
pan immediately to a cooling rack in order to keep the crust from getting soggy.

Corn Bread Corn bread is a quick bread made from a flour incorporating 50 percent
or more cornmeal. Corn bread can be thick and light or thin and crisp, and common
forms of corn bread include Johnnycakes, spoon bread, and hushpuppies.

Corn Flour Corn flour is flour that is made from the milling of whole corn. This flour
has a corn flavor and is great in cornbread, waffles, and muffins, and when mixed with
cornmeal.
Cornmeal This is a medium, coarse, or fine meal made from dry degerminated or
whole grain kernels of corn (yellow, blue, or white).

Creaming Creaming is the process of mixing sugars and fats like butter, margarine,
or shortening together with a mixer, large spoon, or beaters until the mixture is creamy
in its appearance.

Cut In To cut in is to use two knives or a pastry blender to combine cold fats (butter,
margarine, or shortening) with flour or sugar without creaming or mixing air in the
ingredients. A crumbly- or grainy-looking mixture is what results.

Degerminated A degerminated food is a grain food that has had its germ removed in
the process of milling.

Dissolve To dissolve is to mix a dry substance into a liquid until the solids have all
disappeared. Fore example, bakers can dissolve sugar into water, yeast into water, and
more.

Dry Ingredients Dry ingredients are those recipe ingredients that are dry and might
need to be blended before they are added to another kind of mixture in the recipe. Dry
ingredients can include sugar, salt, baking cocoa, spices, flour, and herbs.

Dry Measuring Cups Some of the standard home-baking measuring tools used in
the United States are dry measuring cups. These cups have straight sides with a handle
attached to them at the top, and they come in graduated sizes including cup, 1/3 cup,
cup, 1, and 2 cup measurements. Usually they nest within one another for more
storage. As one would expect from their name, dry ingredients like sugar, cornmeal,
brown sugar, and flour are measured using these cups. These ingredients are spooned
into the cup and then leveled off for measuring using a straight-edged knife or other
utensil.

Dust Dusting is the light sprinkling of a baked good or other surface with a dry
ingredient like flour, meal, or powdered sugar.

Eggs In baking, eggs can perform many tasks for a recipe, including thickening,
binding, leavening, coating, glazing, moisturizing, drying, or emulsifying. They also
introduce flavor, color, and nutrients into the baked good, or they can be used in
frostings to slow crystallization. The standard-size egg called for in most recipes is
large, unless the recipe says otherwise.

Egg Wash An egg wash is a mixture that gives a rich color or gloss to the crust of a
baked good when it is brushed on the unbaked surface o the product. It is made from
combining one whole egg, egg white, or egg yolk with one tablespoon cold milk or
water.

Fermentation Fermentation is the chemical change in a food during the baking

process in which enzymes leavens a dough and helps add flavor. In baking it is the first
stage in which bread dough is allowed to rise before being shaped. Fermenting agents
include yeast and other bacteria and microorganisms.

Flour The major ingredient in the vast majority of baked goods, flour can be made
from many different kinds of grains and other substances like beans, legumes, seeds,
corn, oats, soybeans, teff, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat, rye, spelt, and more. Wheat
flours, however, are by far the most common flours used in baking.

Focaccia Focaccia is an Italian bakers snack whose name comes from the Latin
term focus or hearth. Originally, focaccia was baked on a stone hearth.

Gluten This protein is found in wheat and various cereal flours. Although some
people are allergic to it, gluten makes up the structure of the bread dough and holds the
carbon dioxide that is produced by the yeast or other substance during the fermentation
process. When flour is combined with liquids, gluten develops as the liquid and flour is
mixed and then kneaded. Formed from the proteins glutenin and gliadin, gluten provides
the elasticity and extensibility or stretch for bread dough.

Gluten-Free Some people are allergic to gluten, but there are many ways to bake
without producing the gluten protein. Gluten-free flours include rice, corn, soy,
amaranth, and potato flours. Stone-ground, graham, or whole-wheat flours made from
hard or soft wheats or both kinds are also usable. These are produced through the
milling of whole-wheat kernels or combining white flour, bran and germ. Even though
these gluten-flours may differ in coarseness from their gluten counterparts, the
nutritional value is virtually the same.
High-Altitude Baking Baking in environments at higher elevations require
adjustments in ingredients and temperatures to produce the same results as baking that
occurs in lower altitudes. When cooking is done at an elevation greater than 3,000 feet,
amounts of liquids, leaving agents, and sugar, as well as oven temperature may need to
be changed.

Honey Produced from flower nectar through the work of bees, honey is an all-natural
sweetener that produces a golden-colored curst and holds moisture in different baked
goods. Its color and flavor will vary according to the nectar that the bees use.