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How Eggs Provide Lift

Adding an egg to a cake mixture will tend to cause the cake to rise more. What is it about eggs that provide lift, even without making a foam?
Bain of the Cheesecake

When making a cheesecake, is the water bath, also known as the bain-marie, the best way to go? Why do we even need to bathe a cheesecake?
Baking by the Numbers

There are times when it's really useful to have know how much of one ingredient to use versus another. Bakers use formulas called Baker's Percentages to help them. Here's how they work.

Weighing Ingredients

Some recipes give flour by weight, and some by volume. Why the difference, and what is better?
To Cool, or Not to Cool

There is nothing better than ripping into a loaf of bread fresh from the oven. Or is there?
The Second Rise

When baking bread, you're often asked to allow bread to rise, then punch it down and let it rise again. Why go through all that trouble? What does this "second rise" do for the bread?
Baking Soda and Baking Powder

How these two leaveners get a rise out of baked goods.
Egg sizes and substitutions

How can we merge the world of farmer's markets and precision recipes to ensure that we use the proper amount of farm-fresh, un-graded eggs in our baked goods?
Baking soda *and* baking powder: too much of a good thing?

Seriously, how much leavening does one recipe need? Let's find out if baking powder and baking soda are needed for some recipes, or if we could get by with one or the other.
How is sugar wet?

Follow enough baking recipes, and you'll see the instructions that sugar is to be treated as a wet ingredient. Clearly, if you were dropped into a big pile of sugar, you would not be covered in liquid. Learn why it's considered a wet ingredient.