This $10 Gadget Will Make You a Better Baker

Does this scenario sound familiar? You’re determined make a from-scratch dessert, but you’re running out of time. When you reach the part where recipe says: “Sift dry ingredients together,” you find yourself thinking: “I can’t even remember which cupboard the sifter is in. Can’t I just skip that step?”

Hand-Held Sifter | Photo by Meredith

Not if you want the lightest, airiest cake possible! So says Diane Yang, pastry chef at Spoon and Stable, the acclaimed Minneapolis restaurant run by James Beard Award-winning chef Gavin Kaysen.

“We always sift the flour for our cake recipes,” she says. “Especially if the flour has been sitting in its container for a while, you want to aerate it and remove clumps. Sifting aerates the flour, keeps your measurements accurate, and ensures your cake will be as light as possible.”

Yang notes that flour isn’t the only clumping-prone ingredient in the kitchen: “Almond flour and powdered sugar will benefit from a quick sift, too.”

Pro Tip: In Yang’s kitchen, a perfect dessert begins with precise measurement, so she weighs all her baking ingredients in grams. (To learn more about weighing ingredients, check out 7 Reasons You Need a Digital Scale).

Sift Happens: Tips from the Pastry Chef

You don’t need fancy equipment to sift ingredients. “If you’re using just a small amount of flour in a recipe, you can aerate it simply with a basic whisk,” Yang says.

Photo by Meredith

Because she is usually working with large amounts of flour, Yang uses a flat-bottomed sieve, called a tammis, for her sifting. “We use an 11-inch tammis in the kitchen, but any round-bottomed sieve or crank-operated sifter will do the job, too.”

Tammis | Photo by Jao Carvalho, via Wikimedia Commons

Yang recommends cutting a large square of parchment paper and sifting dry ingredients onto it. “When you’re done, pick up the four corners of the parchment and pour the sifted ingredients into the wet ones,” she says. “The only way you can mess it up is if you cut too small a square of paper and lose flour all over your countertop, so be generous with that parchment.”

Photo by Meredith

Before adding dry ingredients, she suggests a quick check of the sifter to make sure everything has been sifted through the mesh. “Sometimes chunkier ingredients like kosher salt can get stuck, so you need to push them through,” she says.

Once a dessert is baked, there might be another reason to reach for a sifter. “If you’re adding powdered sugar as a decoration, a small hand-held strainer will give it a lighter, airier look than if you just shake the sugar from a shaker or your fingers,” Yang says.

Amazing Pecan Coffee Cake | Photo by Meredith

No matter which piece of equipment you’re using, she says sifting is one step you never want to skip: “If you want a lighter cake, sifting is the way to go.”

---

Test your flour-sifting technique on these Wow-Worthy Cake Recipes.

---

Get more cooking tips and awesome food finds.

---

The post This $10 Gadget Will Make You a Better Baker appeared first on Allrecipes Dish.

from Allrecipes Dish