Tools of the Trade

Every home baker should have a few things in their kitchen, no excuses. There's no reason to not have a decent mixing bowl, measuring cups, and at least one rubber spatula, except maybe if you just got out of prison and have absolutely nothing. And if that's the case, congratulations on rejoining society, and lets get geared up!

I'm splitting this up into two categories: Stuff You Need, and If You Have the Money. If You Have the Money is either fancy versions of Stuff You Need, or extra toys that aren't necessary unless you're going above and beyond. An airbrush machine isn't required to make a decent cake, but, boy, it's fun way to decorate that cake. Everything listed under Stuff You Need can be found in your local stores, including dollar stores, grocery stores, and specialty boutiques. If You Have the Money stuff is a little more difficult to find, as well as more expensive.

Stuff You Need:

-Mixer: stand or hand

A hand mixer is the bare minimum for baking. You are just not going to want to whip egg whites into stiff peaks with a whisk. I tried making whipped cream once with just a whisk, but I was ten years old, and I was using 2% milk instead of actual cream. Even if I had been using cream, it would have taken too long to make whipped cream before I would've given up and turned on the tv instead. Stand mixers are fantastic, as they 1) let you work on other stuff while it mixes/whips/blends, and 2) they come with a dough hook, which eases the process of making bread.

-Bowls: metal, ceramic; wide-rimmed

You want a good, sturdy bowl that can handle forks, whisks, and varying degrees of heat and cold. The mouth should be wide, to ease even mixing and folding.

-Rubber Spatulas

Handled ones are good. Get them in a few different sizes or shapes, at your luxury. I've gotten some (adorable) small ones that are perfect for scraping out small bowls and jars. You'll also want to pick up a hand-held one, sometimes called a rubber scraper, and a baker's helper. They have a curved edge and a straight one, so they're handy for scraping out bowls or scraping off paddles. Plus they're perfect for folding batters.

-Metal Spatulas

You can use these for separating breads/cakes from their pans, lifting items off cooling racks/baking sheets, and spreading batters in pans and fillings and icings on cakes. They're preferable to a knife, as they're thinner, have an even thickness, and many come off-set (bent at an angle) to make it easy when you're trying to spread batter in a cake pan evenly. Get a small off-set spatula to start; it'll fit into smaller pans AND large ones. Getting any larger ones is totally up to you.

-Pots and Pans: for stove-top use

-Cookie Sheets, Cake/Bread Pans, Pie Pans

-Measuring Cups and Spoons

You'll want dry measuring cups, sure, but you really need one for liquids. Volume is volume, so you can measure flour out in a liquid measuring cup. It's a bit harder to measure ounces in a dry measuring cup.

-Pastry Brush

I use a proper pastry brush; i.e., one sold specifically for kitchen use. However, you can buy some kiddy paint brushes from a dollar store, and use the wider ones for baking. Just make sure you only use them for baking.

-Rolling Pin

-Strainer

A mesh strainer is very helpful, as it can double as a sifter. Get one that can hold at least two cups, so you won't have to strain/sift by the spoonful.

-Food Processor

Pulverize, grind, chop, shred, AND you can use it for making pastry doughs!

-Wire Cooling Racks

Not just for cooling down items fresh from the oven. If you do any glazing, you'll want a wire rack to rest your baked goods on, so the glaze can drip off the sides and onto a baking sheet/tray underneath it. Then you won't have half-dried pools of glaze that make the cakes and cookies all soggy on the bottom.

-Candy Thermometer

The standard probe thermometer used for cooking meat and egg dishes is useless when you start cooking sugar. Sugar heats up far hotter than those thermometers go up to--I believe they stop around 220 degrees F, which is the very first stage of sugar cooking. You'll need something that can measure up to 400 degrees F, which would be a candy thermometer. (They're sometimes referred to as a "Frying Oil" thermometer--same diff.) Some recipes for bread or mousse require a specific temperature range, to make sure you don't kill the yeast or serve people undercooked egg dishes.

-Whisk

-Spoons

You want a few different kinds, for scooping, mixing, and eating. Get at least one wooden stirring spoon, especially if you plan to do any cooked sugar.

-Dough Cutter

Also known as a bench scraper or metal scraper. These babies are great for parceling out bread dough, cutting up hunks of scone batter, scraping stuff off your work surface, smoothing out the icing on the side of a cake, and slicing up hunks of butter.

-Knives

A chef's knife, paring knife, and a serrated cake knife are the very bare minimum you need as a baker. Chef's knives are best for chopping nuts, fruits, chocolate, and so on. Serrated knives are the best thing you can use to slice cakes and breads; the longer it is, the better. I got one in my kit for baking school with a 13" long blade, so it's perfect for slicing large cakes cleanly and evenly. Paring knives are good for cutting small things, as well as carving and shaping things made of fondant, for example.

-Grater

A hand grater is good to have around--quite and quick, easy to clean up, and you can use it to zest citrus fruits in a pinch. But, for that, you'll really want to use:

-Zester

A zester is one of these little beauties:

I personally use a Microplane brand zester, which is actually based off of woodworking tools. (People were buying them specifically for kitchen work, so Microplace did a little tweaking and launched a new line of products.) It looks more like a file, and it's pretty versatile. I use it on oranges, lemons, chocolate, and my knuckles on a frequent basis.

-Cookie Cutters

Metal cutters give you a cleaner edge than plastic ones. Some people swear you can use a glass in lieu of any cutter, for a simple circle, but you're honestly better off using an index card. Just cut it smaller, tape it into a tube, and voila! You may need to replace it as it gets soggy and soft, but it's quick, cheap, and gives you a sharp, clean edge.

-Pastry Bags and Tips

They're actually useful for more than just decorating cakes, but that's their main function. You can use them to shape cookies and meringue puffs, too.

-Parchment Paper

It's not totally necessary for every instance, but parchment paper is useful as hell. You really want it when you're working with anything that relies on egg whites for leavening--meringues, angel food cakes, etc--because you can't grease the pans and baking sheets. (Fats of any kind will deflate the egg whites, and you'll be stuck with a chewy, sugary matzo cracker.)

If You Have the Money:

-Stand Mixer

I touched on this briefly, but stand mixers are fantastic. It's just nice to whip or blend your project hands-free, and be freed up to mess about with other things.

-Pastry Cutter

These little cuties are a half-circle of four or five blades connected to a handle. They're for cutting butter into pastry and biscuit dough. I like the idea of them, but, if you have a food processor, you won't need one. We keep a couple in the kitchen where I work, specifically for times when the food processor is being used; the use of the pastry cutters is much slower than a food processor, and often accompanied by swear/crying.

-Scale

Home recipes don't measure ingredients by weight, for the most part. It's good to have one if you get your hands on a book printed for schools and professionals, as they will have sugar and flour and the like measured out by weight. (Those books are also written as high-volume recipes, so be sure you have your math down when you scale the recipes down to a manageable amount.) You can pick up digital home scales at many stores; try to get one that can measure quarter-ounces; ones that can convert between ounces and grams are nice, but not totally necessary.

-Sifter

If you have a strainer, you won't need a sifter. Some of them are cute, though--one at work has a crank--and they're less messy than a strainer.

There are things missing from this list, I'm sure, but it's everything on my list, which was scribbled out between pastries and scones at work. I'll be going more in-depth with some tools, and recipes that demonstrate their use, as I go on. In the meantime, if I compile a large enough list of equipment, I'll put another entry together.

Next time: Staples of the Kitchen! The ingredients you just plain need.