The Biggest Mistakes A Beginner Baker Can Make, According To Elizabeth Chambers

Baking is not an easy discipline. While there are baking tips every home cook should know to get around some common issues, baking is always going to be a complicated undertaking that punishes mistakes. Baking has all sorts of pitfalls to dodge, from avoiding glass dishes when baking a cake to not trusting the baking powder added to boxed cake mix all the way to the many mistakes you need to avoid when baking biscuits. 

Luckily, professionals such as Elizabeth Chambers, CEO and founder of BIRD Bakery, has advice for those just starting out in baking. What she suggests is not particularly complex, but it's important: Take your time and follow the instructions as closely as you possibly can. Chambers tells Daily Meal that "at the end of the day, baking is science," and the most important thing is not to deviate from the recipe — and to be exact when it comes to your measurements.

There's a reason that, as Elizabeth Chambers says, baking is considered a science. (And as an old saying goes, cooking is considered an art.) In many instances when cooking, if you make a mistake, you can pivot and find a way to save the day, such trying these fixes before tossing out brown butter. Not so with baking, where if you make a mistake during the measuring process, you're pretty much locked into that mistake and you might have to start over from scratch.

Chambers thus recommends sticking to some tried-and-true advice when it comes to baking that helps you keep your technique precise. She assures new bakers that doing so will lead to good outcomes, saying: "If you follow the instructions, measure [and] weigh correctly, don't over mix your gluten (flour) and keep your butter and dairy at the correct temperatures, you'll be golden!" So don't wing it when baking and all will (hopefully) turn out well.