Baking Tip: Ingredient Temperatures in Baking

Ingredient temperature plays an important role in developing proper structure in many baked goods. The thing to know about ingredient temperatures in baking is that it does matter more in certain circumstances than it does in others. Some baked goods, like muffins and quick breads, are very forgiving and aren’t going to be ruined by using cold ingredients (though the texture will be better if you allow the ingredients to come to room temperature). While other recipes, like a perfect pound cake, are more finicky and will not turn out well if you use cold ingredients.

If a recipe is written properly then it should state whether ingredients should be cold or room temperature. But sometimes it isn’t stated.

When we are discussing ingredient temperatures for baking the only ingredients that we are talking about are the ones that are typically kept in the refrigerator. This includes things like butter, eggs, milk, cream, cream cheese, and sour cream. Dry ingredients like sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt are always going to be used at room temperature.

When You Should Use Cold Ingredients

As a general rule of thumb, you want to use cold ingredients for any kind of baked good with a flaky final texture. Examples of this are pie and tart crusts, biscuits, scones, puff pastry, croissants, danishes, and other laminated doughs.

For all of these examples it is important that the fat remains solid before the baked good goes into the oven. The small pieces of solid fat that are studded throughout the dough will melt in the oven creating little pockets, aka flakiness. For these recipes you want to make sure your butter, eggs, cream, etc. are cold before making the dough.

But, in recipes that call for cold butter, like pie dough, it's possible for the butter to be too cold. Stella Parks says super cold butter can make pie doughs dry and crumbly, leading bakers to compensate with more water—which increases gluten development, as well as the chances that the pie crust will shrink unattractively in the oven and turn out tough.

When You Should Use Room Temperature Ingredients

If you are making something with a cohesive dough or batter, or anything that won’t have a flaky final texture, then you want your ingredients to be at room temperature. This is going to be the bulk of your baking. There are a few reasons why it matters to bring ingredients to room temperature before baking.

Batters that use the Creaming Method: This is especially true when it comes to butter. When you beat room-temperature butter with sugar until the mixture becomes light and fluffy—this is called the creaming method—the sugar is able to perforate the butter and create tiny pockets of air and you’ll simultaneously get an even texture and more volume. This air keeps cookies thick, rather than spreading out flat. And in cakes it helps them rise up fluffy and light.

You will also notice that ingredients are more readily absorbed into batters and doughs when they are at room temperature. This leads to a more cohesive mixture and a nicer final texture. If the butter were too cold or too warm it could easily break the emulsion resulting in a batter than is curdled. This means that the creaming process wasn’t successful and the end result of your baked good won’t be desirable.

Furthermore, you want eggs and dairy products to be at room temperature when they are being added into a mixture that contains creamed butter and sugar. Cold ingredients could also break this emulsion. When you’re making a cake with the creaming method, adding cold eggs can curdle the batter—once cold eggs (or milk!) hit the butter, the butter will become firm, leaving you with a lumpy texture. Curdled cake batters tend to rise poorly, so the finished cake will be rather dense and you’ll have a bunch of little holes and tunnels in your cake where the butter chunks were and your batter will tend to rise poorly creating a dense, dome-shaped cake.

If your butter is too soft, though, it won’t hold air, and your cakes and cookies will come out flat. If warm or melted butter is used instead of room-temperature butter, none of that air will be incorporated. Melted butter whips into frothy air bubbles that eventually collapse, leaving your batter greasy and heavy.

Cheesecake: For a smooth batter—and therefore a smoother-textured cheesecake— the initial temperature of the ingredients is important. Cold cream cheese is firm and will create a lumpy batter. If the batter is lumpy, the finished cheesecake will not be smooth, but gritty. Softened, room temperature cream cheese mixes easily with the other ingredients. The eggs and other ingredients must also be room temperature. If they’re added to the batter cold they will chill the cream cheese, causing it to solidify and make the batter lumpy even if it started out completely smooth.

What Does Room Temperature Mean

When you are bringing ingredients to room temperature you want them to be around 70 F (21 C). This is the temperature at which butter is soft but is not starting to look greasy or glossy yet. Once butter gets to the point where it is greasy looking or starting to melt it is too warm and you should pop it back in the refrigerator for a few minutes. If you can press a small dent into it, it’s good to go.

The best way to bring ingredients to room temperature is to plan ahead. Leave butter, eggs, milk, sour cream, and cream cheese out on your counter for 30-60 minutes before starting your recipe depending on how warm your kitchen is.

If you are in a rush you can bring your ingredients to room temperature more quickly using these techniques:

• Butter & Cream Cheese: Butter and cream cheese can come to room temperature quickly but cutting them up into small pieces and spreading them out. The smaller the pieces are, the quicker they will come to room temperature. I can get my butter to room temperature in about 5 minutes after it is cut into small pieces. I do not recommend microwaving butter to bring it to room temperature because it can easily become too warm.
• Eggs: Eggs will come to room temperature quickly by placing uncracked eggs in a bowl and cover with warm (not hot) water, and letting them sit for about 5 minutes to come to room temperature.
• Milk & Cream: Milk and cream can be brought to room temperature quickly by microwaving them for about 15-20 seconds to take the chill off.

Other Instances Where Temperature Matter

There are two other instances where it is very important to be aware of ingredient temperatures and that is when making whipped cream and when whipping air into egg whites. Cream needs to be very cold in order to thicken and trap the web of air. In contrast, egg whites will whip up to their highest volume from room temperature.