Friday, February 19, 2010

Cooking Question: Dry and Wet Ingredients

Most baking recipes say to mix the dry ingredients together and then, in another bowl, mix the wet ingredients together and then add fully mixed wet ingredients to fully mixed dry.

Confession- I never do that. I always mix dry and then pour the individual wet ingredients over the dry and mix all together at one time.

So my question is, am I missing a greater part of cooking by doing that? Does following the directions in that instance really make a difference? Or am I okay to carry on defying the rules of baking as I have?

Explanations much appreciated.

Thanks,

6 comments:

Micah and Tara Hobbs said...

Be a rebel...defy the rules of cooking!! I do too. :-)

Eric said...

I think it's mostly about even mixture of ingredients without over stirring. You can probably get away with adding wet ingredients one at a time, but not as much the other way around.

Dan said...

Most recipes like this are concerned that you don't overstir the combined mixture. If you overstir an all-purpose flour dough, gluten forms, making the final result gummy or tough. This is especially important with muffins. (I learned this lesson the hard way)

I often use cake flour, which has low protein (gluten) even in some traditional all-purpose recipes.

So - as long as you don't overstir and you're gettig good results - you should be OK.

S said...

Sometimes I put all the dry in the sifter, which saves the extra bowl. But I am also one who just dumps it all in. Totally agree that you do need to separate with muffins!!
-Sara

David said...

When making the 'melts in your mouth' pancake recipie off the back of the Bisquick box I found that mixing the dry (that has baking powder) and then adding the mixed wet (that has lemon juice) makes better pancakes due to the uniform gas bubbles created by the reaction. If I mix the lemon juice by itself they just don't come out as well.

Gena said...

It only bugs me when the baking soda or baking powder didn't get blended in with the other dry stuff. That is one funky taste to have in a muffin.

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