Thermoblog by Martin Earl
Cakes, Breads, Custards, and More: Doneness Temperatures for Baked Goods
There are few smells as good as the smells made by homemade baked goods. And there are few disappointments so full of treachery like cutting into a beautiful lavender-glazed blueberry-lemon poundcake to find the center is still doughy—it’s the things we do to ourselves that hurt the most, right?
Did you know that baked goods have doneness temperatures? They do! Just because our Grandmothers didn’t use fast and accurate digital thermometers to gauge the doneness of their banana bread, sandwich bread, cupcakes, or chocolate chip cookies doesn’t mean that you in a technological age can’t use one to get consistent, repeatable results with every bake.
Here we’ll break down the doneness temperatures for a whole slew of baked goods and the thermometers you can use to check them. Baking is about to get a whole lot more accurate.
Contents:
• Baking doneness and safety
• Bread doneness temperatures
• Quick bread temperatures
• Doneness temps for cakes
• Custard temperatures
• Baked goods temperature chart
Baking and food safety: do I even need to test the temperature?Some people may ask if doneness temps are necessary when baking. After all, we’ve all eaten raw cookie dough, right? Well, there are two separate things going on here, one is safety and the other is quality.
Let’s just go ahead and address the raw-dough elephant in the room here. Yes, I have eaten cookie dough and brownie batter without getting sick. But I have also probably gotten sick from it. When people think of the risks involved in eating raw dough, they usually think of the potential for salmonella contamination in eggs, and they should think of that, but in fact, there is just as much danger, if not more, in eating the raw flour. Flour is a raw food that poses a risk of pathogenic contamination, specifically from E. Coli. For that reason, flour should not be consumed unless it has been cooked.
Incidentally, chocolate chip cookies are done at 180°F (82°C).
More:
https://blog.thermoworks.com/bread/baked-good-doneness-temps/
