Wine is not meant for sipping only; you can actually bake with it too. Baking with the usual recipe is fun, but adding wine to your recipe makes it more enjoyable and better. Wine doesn’t add or change the flavor of your baking but makes other ingredients in your recipe taste better by enhancing their flavors.
Adding wine to your recipe would be a game-changer for you as a baker. Thinking of baking with wine for the first time? Or are you looking for a way to enhance your baking recipe with wine? Check out these 10 practical tips for baking with wine.
10 Tips For Baking With Wine:
1. Choose A Good Wine
The wine you choose must be a good one, so it must be fresh and clean. The one you just opened is best. You shouldn’t use wine that you’ve left open for days to the extent that it has lost all its luster. Leftover wine should be kept in a tightly covered bottle or container to preserve the flavor and prevent air from entering it.
2. Use A Wine You Like
Don’t use a wine you don’t like sipping because baking with wine would intensify the flavor. If you don’t like a wine enough to sip it, you may not be able to eat what you baked with it too. Using wine you like gives you a sort of foreknowledge about how your baking will taste. Therefore, it’s better always to select the wine you enjoy sipping for your baking.
3. Experiment
You may want to try exploring other flavors by trying wines you don’t like sipping or you have never taken. Sometimes, you just like some wines when used in baking than when used as a drink.
However, this should be done as a calculated risk by tasting after adding a little quantity to determine if you want to proceed with it. If you’re unsure of wines to try, check out usualwines.com to figure out the next wine you wish to explore.
4. The Flavor Matching
The best thing about including wine in your baking is that it enhances the flavor of your baking. This can be achieved by selecting a wine that will match and complement your recipe. Not knowing how to do this can result in a baking disaster. Therefore, take your time when matching your recipe and wine together.
5. Cooking Wine
Never use a wine labeled “cooking wine” or try and adjust your baking recipe to complement the wine content to get the flavor desired. You need to learn about its contents. Cooking wines are usually salty and have lots of preservatives. They’re mostly of a low quality, which may have an adverse effect on your baking.
6. Wine Budget
Don’t go way out of your budget because you want to bake with wine. You can simply take any bottle you can afford and use it in your baking. Although the wine’s quality reflects in the baking, it’s still not compulsory to use an expensive wine to get your desired flavor.
You can keep on adding more wine until you achieve the intensity you need. However, expensive wine is recommended in a situation where adding too much wine may mask the desired result of what you baked.
7. Perfect Quantity
Baking with wine requires a subtle approach to get the perfect taste, which is why bakers say drizzle, don’t drown. Add too little, and you may not get the taste at all. Adding too much may mask the flavor of the other recipes.
For starters, go with a minimal amount; if you’re not getting the desired flavor, add more until you get the desired taste. Don’t start with a large quantity, especially if you’re baking with wine you have never used before.
8. Perfect Timing
Timing when to add your wine to your baking is essential too. The effects of using wine are varied, depending on the recipe and when and how it is added.
It can be challenging to set rules for the timing, but you’ll get better with consistent practice. You can enlist the help of an expert or recipe writer to get the awesome result you want.
9. Maintaining the Sugar Level
Reduce sweet, acidic, or starchy ingredients in your recipe when adding wine because it’ll naturally enhance your baking’s sweetness. Very sweet wines tend to have more residual sugar to enhance the taste. For people burning calories or watching their sugar level, low alcohol wines are suitable to bake with because of the low sugar content.
10. Know Your Wine And Recipe
Always know the content of the wine you want to bake with and take time to research the ingredients used in making the wine. After all, drinking wine entails knowing it too. It’s also important to know the recipe and other ingredients you’ll be using.
This will help you understand how to complement them to achieve the desired flavor and result. You can ask an expert for advice to avoid mistakes.
Watch this video to learn more:
Conclusion
Adding wine to your baking is a smart way to enhance your cooking, prevent wastage, and explore new ways to bake. Start adding wine to your baking recipes by using it in a moderate quantity. Following the tips above will help you become an expert in no time.
You can always seek advice from recipe experts whenever you are unsure of what to do. What else are you waiting for? Start enjoying the rich advantages of baking with wine today!
Want to learn how to find great cooking advice? Read this post.
Fallon Chan is a food and lifestyle photographer and blogger.
