Most bakers know that a sweltering summer season kitchen can wreak havoc on a recipe, however a lesser-known reality is that chilly winter kitchens may cause simply as a lot bother—albeit of a special type. When kitchen temperatures dip under 70°F (21°C), pie and cookie doughs can find yourself dry and crumbly, layer muffins can dome and prove riddled with tunnels and holes, buttercreams can curdle, and breads can refuse to rise.
These points can manifest in refined methods when it is solely 68°F—so refined that you could be merely write them off as a fluke—however they will develop extra excessive because the temperature drops. It is not simply that there is a chill within the air; it is that any given thermostat setting represents the temperature of our pantry staples and gear, like flour, sugar, and mixing bowls.
That is why cranking up the warmth or firing up the oven is not an answer. The air temperature could abruptly heat to a toasty 72°F, however deep in your pantry, that bag of flour will nonetheless be 65°F (or regardless of the case could also be). Luckily, you possibly can sidestep these issues altogether if you understand which strategies they’re prone to have an effect on.
Creaming Technique
Many cake and cookie recipes will name for creaming the butter and sugar till “fluffy and light-weight.” The creaming course of will take for much longer than indicated while you’re working with chilly substances and gear, so abandon any estimated timetable and stick with the visible cues. Give it time for the butter and sugar to melt and aerate—in any other case, even a easy espresso cake can wind up dense and gummy alongside the underside, or else pocked with holes.
If a kitchen is actually chilly, under 65°F (18°C), the method will doubtless stall out, leaving the butter and sugar smeared across the bowl as a thick, heavy paste that may refuse to budge. In that case, I am going to escape my culinary torch to hit the blending bowl with a delicate flame (three cheers for chrome steel!) to assist loosen the butter. If you do not have one, seize a hair dryer, or set the bowl over a steaming water tub for just some seconds to melt, not soften, the butter.
Alternatively, warming the sugar to about 70°F earlier than creaming may help mimic the situations of a extra temperate kitchen. Merely pop a dish of sugar right into a low oven for a minute or two, and let it settle down if you happen to overshoot that focus on temperature. And if you happen to occur to overlook about it, don’t fret—that is how I “invented” toasted sugar.
Emulsifying Eggs
Within the realm of baking, most recipes name for “room-temperature” eggs, however the soiled secret of recipe improvement is that “room temperature” often means 70°F. So, whatever the precise temperature in your kitchen, that is the temperature you need to purpose for when warming up the eggs. In a bowl of scorching faucet water (say, 110°F/43°C), it is going to take about three minutes to heat up as many eggs.
Lots of my cookie recipes (equivalent to my old style chocolate chip cookies) could name for eggs “straight from the fridge” as a technique of controlling dough temperature to maintain issues cool. After all, that is not obligatory in a chilly setting, so take into account warming the eggs to 70°F if you happen to need assistance offsetting the consequences of including chilly substances, like flour and chocolate, in a while.
Kneading Pastry
It is tempting to suppose {that a} pie dough wants extra water when it feels stiff, crumbly, and dry in winter months. However while you’re coping with issues attributable to environmental situations, altering the method will not handle the underlying subject; it will solely create new issues. In pie dough, for instance, extra water means extra gluten improvement, and that makes pie doughs powerful and susceptible to shrinking as they bake. So please, do not regulate the recipe—regulate the dough temperature.
This may be completed by merely utilizing 70°F water as a substitute of the chilly water most recipes name for. If it is actually frigid in your kitchen, warming the flour to about 70°F may help, too—toss it in a low oven, and let it settle down if you happen to overshoot that purpose. The perfect working temperature for pie dough is about 68°F (20°C), so the mixture of tepid flour and chilly butter ought to common proper out. If the deed is already completed, and also you’re caught with a chilly dough that cracks and crumbles when rolled, let it sit in a barely heat setting till it reaches about 68°F, then strive once more.
Whipping Buttercream
Whether or not you make a basic Swiss meringue buttercream or the custard-based cream cheese buttercream from my e book, a chilly buttercream is a curdled buttercream. Even after they do not appear like cottage cheese, chilly buttercreams have a greasy mouthfeel, and their stiff consistency makes them tough to unfold over a cake.
If that occurs to you, place the bowl of buttercream over a steaming water tub till it begins to soften across the edges, then return it to the stand mixer and whip till clean. This may be repeated as wanted to attain a superbly clean, silky-soft consistency.
Proofing Bread
Most recipes for yeast-raised breads embrace particulars for creating the best proofing setting, however many others name for proofing the bread at room temperature. When that falls effectively under 70°F, the dough will take for much longer to rise, which is okay by me. My choice is to waft and pay nearer consideration to a recipe’s visible cues, equivalent to when my cinnamon roll dough rises till it is mild sufficient to retain a shallow impression when gently poked.
If you would like to hurry issues up in a yeast-raised dough, strive bringing the flour to about 70°F earlier than getting began. Hotter liquids may help, too, however that may be a riskier transfer, because it has the potential to hurt the yeast. In any other case, your greatest wager is to create a hotter setting for the dough. My favourite trick is to microwave a mug of water till it is boiling-hot, then flip off the microwave and pop within the bowl of dough, basically turning the microwave itself right into a cheater’s proof field.
With any of those steps, the purpose is to not get issues scorching however to extra intently mimic the situations of a 70°F setting, so restraint is vital. For the reason that underlying drawback is a baking setting that is just a bit chilly, there is no have to go to extremes. A delicate nudge by just a few levels in the appropriate course is all we have to conquer the chilly.