Baking is a food cooking method using prolonged dry heat acting by convection, rather than by thermal radiation, normally in an oven, but also in hot ashes, or on hot stones. The most common baked item is bread but many other types of foods are baked. Heat is gradually transferred "from the surface of cakes, cookies and breads to their centre. As heat travels through it transforms batters and doughs into baked goods with a firm dry crust and a softer centre". Baking can be combined with grilling to produce a hybrid barbecue variant, by using both methods simultaneously or one before the other, cooking twice. Baking is related to barbecuing because the concept of the masonry oven is similar to that of a smoke pit.
Baking has been traditionally done at home by women for domestic consumption, by men in bakeries and restaurants for local consumption and when production was industrialised, by machines in large factories. The art and skill of baking remains a fundamental one and important for nutrition, as baked goods, especially breads, are a common food, economically and culturally important. A person who prepares baked goods as a profession is called a baker.
Foods and techniques
All types of food can be baked but some require special care and protection from direct heat. Various techniques have been developed to provide this protection.
As well as bread, baking is used to prepare cakes, pastries, pies, tarts, quiches, cookies, scones, crackers and pretzels. These popular items are known collectively as "baked goods," and are sold at a bakery.
Meat, including cured meats, such as ham can also be baked, but baking is usually reserved for meatloaf, smaller cuts of whole meats, and whole meats that contain stuffing or coating such as bread crumbs or buttermilk batter. Some foods are surrounded with moisture during baking by placing a small amount of liquid (such as water or broth) in the bottom of a closed pan, and letting it steam up around the food, a method commonly known as braising or slow baking. Larger cuts prepared without stuffing or coating are more often roasted, which is a similar process, using higher temperatures and shorter cooking times. Roasting, however, is only suitable for the finer cuts of meat, so other methods have been developed to make the tougher meat cuts palatable after baking. One of these is the method known as en croûte (French for "in a crust"), which protects the food from direct heat and seals the natural juices inside. Meat, poultry, game, fish or vegetables can be prepared by baking en croûte. Well-known examples include Beef Wellington, where the beef is encased in pastry before baking; pâté en croûte, where the terrine is encased in pastry before baking; and the Vietnamese variant, a meat-filled pastry called pâté chaud. The en croûte method also allows meat to be baked by burying it in the embers of a fire - a favourite method of cooking venison. In this case, the protective case (or crust) is made from a paste of flour and water and is discarded before eating. Salt can also be used to make a protective crust that is not eaten. Another method of protecting food from the heat while it is baking, is to cook it en papillote (French for "in parchment"). In this method, the food is covered by baking paper (or aluminium foil) to protect it while it is being baked. The cooked parcel of food can be served unopened, with an element of surprise, allowing diners to discover the contents for themselves.
Eggs can be baked to produce savoury or sweet dishes. In combination with dairy products and/or cheese, they are often prepared to serve as a dessert. Although a baked custard, for example, can be made using starch (in the form of flour, cornflour, arrowroot or potato flour), the flavour of the dish is much more delicate if eggs are used as the thickening agent. Baked custards, such as crème caramel, are among the items that need protection from an oven's direct heat, and the bain-marie method serves this purpose. The cooking container is half submerged in water in another, larger one, so that the heat in the oven is more gently applied during the baking process. Baking a successful soufflé requires that the baking process be carefully controlled - the oven temperature must be absolutely even and the oven space not shared with another dish. These factors, along with the theatrical effect of an air-filled dessert, have given this baked food a reputation for being a culinary achievement. Similarly, a good baking technique (and a good oven) are also needed to create a baked Alaska because of the difficulty of baking hot meringue and cold ice cream at the same time.
Baking can also be used to prepare various other foods, such as for example, baked potatoes, baked apples, baked beans, some casseroles and pasta dishes such as lasagne.
History
The first evidence of baking occurred when humans took wild grass grains, soaked them in water, and mixed everything together, mashing it into a kind of broth-like paste. The paste was cooked by pouring it onto a flat, hot rock, resulting in a bread-like substance. Later, this paste was roasted on hot embers, which made bread-making easier, as it could now be made any time fire was created. The Ancient Egyptians baked bread using yeast, which they had previously been using to brew beer. Bread baking began in Ancient Greece around 600 BC, leading to the invention of enclosed ovens. "Ovens and worktables have been discovered in archaeological digs from Turkey (Hacilar) to Israel (Jericho) and these date from about 5600BCE."
Baking flourished in the Roman Empire. In about 300 BC, the pastry cook became an occupation for Romans (known as the pastillarium). This became a respected profession because pastries were considered decadent, and Romans loved festivity and celebration. Thus, pastries were often cooked especially for large banquets, and any pastry cook who could invent new types of tasty treats was highly prized. Around 1 AD, there were more than three hundred pastry chefs in Rome, and Cato wrote about how they created all sorts of diverse foods, and flourished because of those foods. Cato speaks of an enormous amount of breads; included amongst these are the libum (sacrificial cakes made with flour), placenta (groats and cress), spira (our modern day flour pretzels), scibilata (tortes), savaillum (sweet cake), and globus apherica (fritters). A great selection of these, with many different variations, different ingredients, and varied patterns, were often found at banquets and dining halls. The Romans baked bread in an oven with its own chimney, and had mills to grind grain into flour. A bakers' guild was established in 168 BC in Rome.
Eventually, the Roman art of baking became known throughout Europe, and eventually spread to the eastern parts of Asia. From the 19th century, alternative leavening agents became more common, such as baking soda. Bakers often baked goods at home and then sold them in the streets. This scene was so common that Rembrandt, among others, painted a pastry chef selling pancakes in the streets of Germany, with children clamoring for a sample. In London, pastry chefs sold their goods from handcarts. This developed into a system of delivery of baked goods to households, and demand increased greatly as a result. In Paris, the first open-air café of baked goods was developed, and baking became an established art throughout the entire world.
Commercial baking
Baking developed into an industry using machinery that enabled more goods to be produced and which then had to be distributed more widely. In the United States the baking industry "was built on marketing methods used during feudal times and production techniques developed by the Romans." Some makers of snacks such as potato chips or crisps have produced baked versions of their snack items as an alternative to the usual cooking method of deep-frying in an attempt to reduce the calorie or fat content of their snack products. Baking has opened up doors to businesses such as cake making factories and private cake shops where the baking process is done with larger amounts in bigger and open furnaces.
The aroma and texture of baked goods as they come out of the oven is strongly appealing but it is a quality that is quickly lost. Since the flavour and appeal largely depend on this freshness, commercial producers have had to compensate by using food additives as well as imaginative labelling. As baked goods are more and more purchased from commercial suppliers, producers try to capture that original appeal by adding the label "home-baked". Such a usage seeks to make an emotional link to the remembered freshness of baked goods and seeks also to attach any positive associations the purchaser has with the idea of "home" to the bought product. Freshness is such an important quality that restaurants, although they are commercial (and not domestic) preparers of food, bake their own products for their customers. For example, scones at The Ritz London Hotel "are not baked until early afternoon on the day they are to be served, to make sure they are as fresh as possible."
Equipment
Baking needs an enclosed space for heating - an oven. The fuel can be supplied by wood or coal; gas or electricity. Adding and removing items from an oven may be done by a long handled tool called a peel.
Many commercial ovens are provided with two heating elements: one for baking, using convection and thermal conduction to heat the food, and one for broiling or grilling, heating mainly by radiation. Another piece of equipment still used in the 21st century for baking is the Dutch oven. "Also called a bake kettle, bastable, bread oven, fire pan, bake oven kail pot, tin kitchen, roasting kitchen, doufeu (French: "gentle fire") or feu de compagne (French: "country oven") [it] originally replaced the cooking jack as the latest fireside cooking technology," combining "the convenience of pot-oven and hangover oven."
Process
There are eleven events that occur concurrently during baking, and some of them, such as starch glutenization, would not occur at room temperature.
- Fats melt;
- Gases form and expand
- Microorganisms die
- Sugar dissolves
- Egg and gluten proteins coagulate
- Starches gelatinise
- Gases evaporate
- Caramelization and Maillard browning occur on crust
- Enzymes are inactivated
- Changes occur to nutrients
- Pectin breaks down.
The dry heat of baking changes the form of starches in the food and causes its outer surfaces to brown, giving it an attractive appearance and taste. The browning is caused by caramelization of sugars and the Maillard reaction. Maillard browning occurs when "sugars break down in the presence of proteins". Because foods contain many different types of sugars and proteins, Maillard browning contributes to the flavour of a wide range of foods, including nuts, roast beef and baked bread." The moisture is never entirely "sealed in"; over time, an item being baked will become dry. This is often an advantage, especially in situations where drying is the desired outcome, like drying herbs or roasting certain types of vegetables.
The baking process does not require any fat to be used to cook in an oven. When baking, consideration must be given to the amount of fat that is contained in the food item. Higher levels of fat such as margarine, butter or vegetable shortening will cause an item to spread out during the baking process.
With the passage of time breads harden; they become stale. This is not primarily due to moisture being lost from the baked products, but more a reorganization of the way in which the water and starch are associated over time. This process is similar to recrystallization, and is promoted by storage at cool temperatures, such as in a domestic refrigerator.
Cultural and religious significance
Baking, especially of bread, holds special significance for many cultures. Baked goods are normally served at all kinds of party and special attention is given to their quality at formal events. They are also one of the main components of a tea party, including at nursery teas. Baking is such a fundamental part of everyday food consumption, so familiar to children that the nursery rhyme Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man takes baking as its subject.
For Jews, Matzo is a baked product of considerable religious and ritual significance. Baked matzah bread can be ground up and used in other dishes, such as Gefilte fish, and baked again. For Christians, bread has to be baked to be used as an essential component of the sacrament of the Eucharist. In the Eastern Christian tradition, baked bread in the form of birds is given to children to carry to the fields in a spring ceremony that celebrates the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.
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