Listen to Your Cake Before You Take It Out of the Oven
Baking is an activity that involves all of your senses. You should look at your dough to see if it has doubled in size, feel the bread as you knead it to achieve the right level of elasticity, and sniff the air to make sure nothing is burning. The taste is … well, obviously. And according to Peter – this season’s first star baker of The Great British Bake Off – you should listen to your cakes to see if they are baked.
In fact, this wisdom is rooted in the distant past. As he explains in his voiceover, Peter (a 20-year-old student from Edinburgh studying accounting and finance) learned the trick from a season 3 contestant (American “season 3”) when he was just a teenager:
“John Waite in the third series Bake Off – he said his mom taught him to listen to it. If it is still wet, it will sound like it is boiling over. But if it’s just a pretty wet cake, it just has a gentle, delicate sound. “
It makes sense. If there is still a lot of water inside your cake, it will turn from liquid to steam and it will make a noise. After most of it has evaporated or absorbed by starch, etc., it will make less noise.
You may need to calibrate your ear the first couple of times, so listen to your pie at a few different points, noting how it sounds when you know it’s definitely undercooked, and use other cues to help you determine it. perfectly done point. (Wait to listen to the end of baking time, though, or your pie might drop.) Amount of baking concern, I personally welcome this sound criterion.
Last updated on 10/1/2020 12:58 PM EST: Changed language to better represent what’s going on inside the cake and warn you not to open the oven too early.