Cooking Baking Eating

You know what I really hate? When you go to all the trouble of baking something wonderful and your food sticks to the pan or has a chemically taste to it because of baking spray.

I grew up with my mother using the old fashioned way of making pans non stick, butter and flour. Now granted my mother isn’t the best cook and extra brown was considered done sometimes, but she knew a few tricks to getting her box mix cakes from the pans.

Over the years I’ve had to do my own experimentation on what works for making my quick breads, yeast breast and cakes not stick to their pans.

Non Stick Spray
I find that the sprays generally work well when you’re trying to keep something from sticking to the pans. There is one downside to several of the brands though. They taste chemically. They definitely will help with the sticking factor, but I’m just so turned off by the taste most of the time. Especially butter flavored.

The one thing that I’ve noticed is the non stick spray works well for baking yeast bread in my metal and glass pans. This type of product definitely has a place in the kitchen, try looking for the organic varieties, less chemical taste.

Oil
We use oil often in baking, so it might make sense to use it to grease the pans to make it come out easier right? Wrong.

I think I have had the most sticking problems when it came to using oils to make it not stick. Baked goods really don’t do well with it. It just gets absorbed into the bread/cake/whatever and cements to the side.

Margarine and Flour
Going off of the way my mother used to do it, I’ve tried using margarine and flour for my baking and most of the time it has turned out terrible. I’ve had to try and dig muffins out of their tins with a knife. It was a very sad looking batch of muffins. I would definitely not recommend using margarine.

Butter and Flour
The age old method really does work. Something about the fats in the butter and the flour make the cakes and muffins just slip out so easily. This is ultimately the method I use for all of my banana, zucchini, and pumpkin breads, as well as my cakes and brownies.

Sometimes your mother really did know what was best. Who knew?