Baking

Each month the BBC chef focuses on a key technique, and shares new seasonal recipes

Good Food contributing editor Tom Kerridge is chef-owner of The Hand & Flowers and The Coach – both in Marlow, Buckinghamshire. His latest book, Tom Kerridge’s Dopamine Diet (£20, Absolute Press), is out this month. Each month Tom creates exclusive recipes for us. @Cheftomkerridge

Baking is a dry-heat method of cooking. Traditionally it involved cooking on or under hot coals, whereas roasting was done over open flames. Now that both are done in the oven, they’re trickier to distinguish. Roasting generally means cooking solid foods like meat and vegetables in fat, often at high temperatures, until crisp and golden. Baking uses less or no cooking fat and mostly involves a change from liquid or soft solid to firm solid – soft bread dough to airy loaf; liquid cake batter to springy sponge; pliable raw pastry to crumbly short or layered pu . When applied to other food, ‘baked’ usually means putting ingredients in a closed casserole, wrapping in foil, immersing in a sauce or placing on top of a bed of veg (as in my mullet recipe, p114), at a lower temperature than roasting. Timing is key. For perfectly textured and golden bakes, keep an eye on your oven and set a timer in case you get distracted.