From Whisk to Oven: Ten Techniques Behind Breads and Pastries

Whisking blends ingredients until smooth or works air into a mixture, and the shape of the whisk's wire loops varies with the job it is meant for, which makes it the simplest tool to start with.

In baking, creaming means blending ingredients with a softened solid fat, typically butter, until light and combined, the standard first step for many cakes and cookies; the same word also names unrelated processes elsewhere in the kitchen and the dairy.

Tangzhong, also called a water roux or yudane, is a paste of flour cooked in water or milk above 65 degrees Celsius; it gels the starch so that bread stays soft and resists staling longer. Its country of origin is recorded as Japan.

The straight dough method, also called the direct dough method, combines every fresh ingredient and kneads it in one session, then lets the dough ferment in bulk for about an hour or longer, unlike methods that ferment a separate pre-ferment first.

Kneading forms gluten as the wheat proteins gliadin and glutenin expand into strands, and the entry notes that an extended fermentation of over twelve hours in a wet, low-yeast dough can replace it, which is the idea behind no-knead bread.

Dough sheeting uses rotating rollers to press dough into an even sheet and gauging rollers to bring it to the required thickness; it is used mainly in industrial bakeries and can also laminate dough.

Laminated dough is built from many thin layers of dough separated by butter or another solid fat, through repeated folding and rolling, and in baking the water in the butter turns to steam and puffs the layers apart. Croissants, Danish pastry and puff pastry are made this way.

Blind baking bakes a pie crust or pastry shell before it is filled, which is necessary when the filling will not be baked. The crust is held in shape with foil or parchment weighted by ceramic beads, metal weights or dried beans.

Parbaking bakes bread only part of the way, to roughly 80 percent doneness according to the entry, and then freezes it rapidly for storage or later finishing, a method used to scale up the production and distribution of products such as bagels.

A glaze is a glossy, translucent coating applied by dipping, dripping or brushing, either before or after cooking. Sweet examples include a doughnut glaze of powdered sugar and water, and the entry also lists savory glazes such as demi-glace brushed onto meats.