You may be surprised to learn that one of the secret ingredients in many baking recipes is salt. Even in sweet recipes, it turns out to be an ideal ingredient to balance the flavors and give that magic touch to the dessert. What does salt do in baking? Here we bring you the answer you need to improve your kitchen.
Reasons to add salt to baking recipes.
Salt is known as the star ingredient for salting foods. But its applications do not end there because it is an ideal ingredient for many things in confectionery. For example:
- Enhance the flavors: That extra pinch of salt that you add to your recipes makes all the flavors enhance a little more. You can go from a standard recipe to a unique recipe with explosions of unique flavors.
- Increases the shelf life of food: Salt has great preservative power; it was even used many years ago to preserve meat and fish for years. So, the great salt will make your cakes, slices of bread or any baked goods last longer than usual and keep their texture.
- Improves the structuring of the dough: When it comes to bread doughs that need to rise a lot, salt helps them maintain the structure of the gases and does not go down in the oven. Provides consistency, strength, and softness to withstand drastic temperature changes.
- Improves the flavors and the external finish of the dough: In terms of aesthetics after baking, recipes with a pinch of salt have a better presentation than those without. It helps make crusts more golden and caramelized, with a firm and crisp texture, protecting a soft and fluffy filling. Also, candies and cookies allow them to brown evenly and take on that juicy and delicious look.
- Slow and controlled fermentation: Every baker’s dream is a slow fermentation that makes their pieces of bread perfect. Did you know that you can achieve this with salt? Don’t be afraid of salt in your loaves of bread! This will help control the reaction of the yeast and prevent the dough from rising excessively, damaging the final product. With the salt, you will obtain a slow and controlled fermentation to obtain the best size and finish in your pieces of bread.
- Sweets with a balanced flavor: We know that a sweet must balance all flavors, and the terror of pastry chefs is that their desserts are cloying. Avoid this with saWe we enhance all flavors, even the sweet ones!
- Better textures: Salt is the star ingredient, especially for crunchy and creamy recipes. However, for smooth and creamy desserts, you can also add a touch of crunch with salt, for example, chocolate mousse.
Now that you know what does salt do in baking? You’ll want to use it constantly to experiment with your recipes and enhance the flavors you’ve prepared so far. Don’t stop and learn more every day!