The Essentials

Welcome! My name is Skyler. I am currently a Baking and Pastry student at the happiest place on earth (most days), The Culinary Institute of America in beautiful St. Helena. I am about to leave for externship for five months which I will spend working at the LA Times Test Kitchen. I could not be more excited. The one thing I miss about "regular" college/schooling, is writing. So I figured I would get back into it and do it about something I love: FOOD! Mostly desserts, but thats okay. For some of my older recipes, check out my old blog: skylerscreations.blogspot.com. I do not have access to that anymore, and I am looking for a sort of different feel on this blog. So my first post will be about the essentials that any home kitchen needs to have in the pantry at any given time. (These are mostly for baking, but I'll try and throw in the little I know about cooking as well.)

Flour - mostly All Purpose (AP Flour) will do, as clearly it is all purpose. Bleached or unbleached, up to you. Cake Flour its a great alternative. It is usually softer, and great in ... cakes. As well as some cookie doughs, etc. But does not have as strong of a structure so cannot be used in all products. Bread Flour is very strong structure-wise and is great for bread's an laminated doughs - which you will probably not be doing at home. Bread flour adds a better flavor and structure to bread, but if you aren't going to be making serious bread at home, this is not necessary. AP will do for most.

Vanilla - my favorite vanilla of all time is Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla Bean PASTE. It has a yellow label, I buy it at William-Sonoma, but most specialty food stores will carry it. Why is paste in caps? Because it is the best of both worlds. It has the same intense flavor as extract, and is just as visually pleasing as a vanilla bean. Bean's are both expensive and relatively useless. They have a lovely aroma, and are great for things that you are actually going to see (ice cream, for instance) but the paste adds the same speckled effect. Vanilla extract is fine and will give you the flavor (somewhat) but will not last you nearly as long and be nearly as delicious as the paste. 

Eggs - this is simple. When recipes call for a number of eggs instead of a weight, they are referring to large AA eggs. 

Fat - butter. Straight up butter. Do not give me that margarine stuff unless a recipe specifically asks for it. Which 95% of recipes do not. They are not the same, they do not have the same taste, and they do not give the same result. Olive oil is also a fat used in baked products and can SOMETIMES be a replacement for melted butter, but not always. It is important to have oil for baked goods, which can be cheap olive oil or canola oil works fine. However, for the "hot side" (savory cooking), it is important to have a good olive oil that has a strong delicious flavor. You can have fun playing around with different olive oils. I usually have garlic olive oil for cooking purposes, but thats because I think everything needs garlic. So, garlic would be another essential. 

Sugar - plain and simple. In my cabinet I usually have granulated, light brown, and powdered. Though at school I have become quite used to and fond of superfine instead of granulated - it does not really make a huge difference. 

There are of course other essentials, but with flour, eggs, sugar, and fat - you can throw something simple together at the last minute if you need to. Just add some flavoring, chocolate is a big one that takes a lot to go rancid, so keep that around too. Chocolate is an ingredient that when buying, you actually want to spend time figuring out what chocolate you like, and making sure it is of high quality. Play around with other flavors, extracts or purees' work great.