Baking Tools for Serious Chefs
By Emily KerrYou can't bake the perfect cake without the perfect pan. You can't craft cookies that look like cars without car cookie cutters. And how do you get that tangy zing to your lemon bars? Not without a zest grater, of course!
Bake Like a Career Chef with the Right Tools
The right baking tools are essential to the best baking, so take a look at the tools serious bakers typically use to make their creations perfect and easy to prepare. They'll give you a glimpse of the much wider range of tools that professional bakers use, and those that you'll learn about in a baking diploma or certificate program.
- Baker's mat. Instead of dousing your cutting board or countertop with flour, a flexible baker's mat allows your bakers to easily transfer rolled dough onto any pan or tray. It also is marked with various diameters for measuring ease.
- Hands-free egg separator. When all you need is the yolk, it can be a pain to filter out that runny egg white, and vice versa. A hands-free egg separator rests on the edge of a mixing bowl, so bakers can crack egg after egg and quickly get exact bakery measurements.
- Cookie press. Insert cookie dough into this futuristic tube, choose from a variety of shapes and patterns, and press out patisserie-perfect cookies. Friends will think these came straight from the bakery.
- Pastry blender. If you've ever made pastry, you know how tough it can be to mix shortening and flour. This hand-held mixer does the job with just four steel bars. It's a bakery essential!
- Zest grater. Resembling a miniature cheese grater, a zest grater is great for getting the essence of orange, lemon, or lime into your patisserie treats.
- Cooling rack. Baking is a process with many phases, one of which is cooling. Whether it's pastry or pie, your chef will need a cooling rack to complete the bake cycle.
- Pie-crust protector. Ever wonder how bakery pies are always golden and never burnt? At the bakery, chefs bake pies with crust protectors, thin aluminum bands that circle each pie, covering just the crust.
These are just a few of the baking tools that will put a smile on the face of someone dedicated to baking. If these convenient and time-saving utensils fire up your interest in the art of baking, all of them, and many more, are taught and used in baking and pastry/patisserie programs, offered at culinary schools across the country.
