Kitchen Planning

Great British Bake Off kitchen

24.10.2018

The standard of contestants on the Great British Bake Off seems to get better each year. Showstoppers and technicals become more and more extravagant (when they come out of the oven at the right time that is) and the challenges themselves become more and more complex. In this post, we explain how modern appliances are bringing budding bakers even closer to their perfect bakes, at the touch of a button. If you’d like to move away from soggy bottoms and sinking souffles, keep reading!

Bake off ovens

As it’s often said in the nation’s favourite programme, baking is a science and precision is everything. So, whilst bakers may spend a lot of time experimenting when they discover new ingredients and create new recipes – if they’ve made it into the bake off tent, there’s no time for experimenting. If you get the pastry right and your sponge light and fluffy, often sticking to more traditional and basic recipes is better.

The Channel Four Show is never short of a little bit of light-hearted drama. We’ve seen contestants despair when they go to check if the contents of their oven are ready, only to discover that the oven was never on in the first place! The Burnhill team have often wondered if the contestants are fully prepped on how to use their ovens. They say ‘a bad workman blames his tools’ but if Channel 4 don’t allow contestants this information – they’re at a serious disadvantage. When you don’t know how to use your oven properly, you won’t make the most of it and won’t be able to showcase and develop your baking knowledge to the full either.

Oven symbols can be obscure but if you don’t know what they mean, precise and successful bakes occur by chance as opposed to skill. So it’s worth having a look at your manual or even going on a course provided by the appliance brand. Whereas pro bakers from the past would have perfected bakes in their own ovens, we now have access to a whole range of settings and multi-function ovens. If you haven’t read your oven manual and you don’t know about all of these, you could be missing out on getting the best cooking and baking results!

Miele, Neff and Siemens ovens now offer settings designed specifically for baking and proving. With the right setting you can be sure to get your showstopper and your technical bakes absolutely spot on. As well as this, you can enhance the experience when enjoying your bakes using the plate warming and food warming settings. If it’s best served warm or with melting ice cream, they’ll do the trick.

If you aren’t already running to your kitchen to re-attempt your favourite Victoria Sponge, that’s not all…

 

The prove is in the pudding

From oven settings to smart food thermometers and mobile apps, you don’t need to sit and stare through your oven door ‘window’ to make sure your biscuits have the perfect ‘snap’ anymore. There are a whole host of smart technologies which make your oven (and you) even smarter.

The Range app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch connects your food with your phone. It provides a calibrated temperature reading from your Range thermometer to your phone via notifications that can be set to arrive on all your iOS devices – even if you’re in another city! The Range app remembers what you’re baking so that you can focus on the next course. You can get remote alerts with sound sent to all of your devices. Plus, if you’re embracing the science-y side of baking, you can even save, share and compare your results with fellow bakers. Use the graphing mode to record your experiments. You can monitor specific temperature bands for meat, candy making, homebrewing…to name a few!

 

Keep a clear head in the tent

One thing we haven’t seen in the Bake Off tent are extractor fans. And with temperatures (and stress levels) rising as they do – things seem to get steamy in there. Of course, it would be difficult to fit these in the tent as temporary installations. But in your enclosed, permanent kitchens at home, installation and functioning of these has become far easier and more effective than in the past. We don’t need to worry about knocking our heads on overhead fans, forgetting to clean the grease off them or creating an eye sore in our otherwise minimalistic and open plan kitchens. With Bora’s integrated extractor fans, your hob can come with an extractor fan built in.

To create a traditional kitchen with retro appliances as seen on The Great British Bake off, speak to the Burnhill Kitchen team about which designs and appliances best suit your kitchen. Or if gadgets and appliances aren’t what you’re looking for – you can also get bespoke, bake off style counters and proving drawers built in.

Reach Bake Off worthy status when you purchase any of the above appliances from Burnhill Kitchens. The design and consultation process at Burnhill Kitchens in Kent is free of charge, and our expert team will work closely with you to devise our ideal kitchen before figuring out the next steps.

Why wait? Request your brochure today…