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bitter. Whenzesting the fruit, be careful to shave off only the colored layer. Try to zest directly over the rest of the ingredients to ensure that the citrus oil, loaded with flavor, makes it into your baked good as well.
    COOKING SPRAY
    As with parchment paper, oil spray is nothing short of miraculous in terms of its nonstick qualities. Use it to coat the wells and tops of muffin pans and the insides of small loaf pans to aid in the release of baked goods. Use only unflavored spray.
    DAIRYPRODUCTS
    Have you ever started a recipe and suddenly realized, “Oh no, I don’t have enough sour cream”? This happened all the time to us while we were testing these recipes. Fortunately, it often works fine to fill in the missing ingredient with an equivalent milk product. For example, if the recipe calls for 1 cup of sour cream, you can substitute a mixture of sour cream and plain yogurt or simply use all yogurt. Cream, half-and-half, and milk can also be substituted for each other, but their differing fat content can affect the richness and texture of the final bread.
    DRIED FRUITS
    The advantages to using dried fruits is that they are available year-round and they have a long shelf life. Keep a supply of golden raisins, currants, apricots, and apples on hand. With such a variety, you will be free to experiment with endless muffin and scone combinations.
    EGGS
    All of our recipes are made using large eggs.
    EXTRACTS
    We use only pure vanilla extract in our recipes.
    FLOUR
    Volumes could be written about flour, but we are going to keep it simple here. The type of flour used in each recipe is important to the success of the baked good you are making. When a recipe calls for bread flour, be sure to use bread flour, not all-purpose flour, and vice versa. Made from hard wheat, bread flour is high in protein, which yields a dough with a well-developed gluten network. (Gluten is the complex protein formed when flour is mixed with water; it creates structure—and ultimately chewiness and airiness—in breads.) All-purpose flour, with its lower protein content, produces a more delicate crumb, which is what you want when making cakelike foods such as scones or muffins. Both of these flours are now widely available, but if you are having problems finding them, consult the Source List .
    MOLASSES
    The molasses used in most of our recipes is dark and unsulfured. Unsulfured molasses is made from the juice of sun-ripened sugarcane and has a deep, rich, sweet flavor.Blackstrap molasses is a by-product of a third sugarcane boiling and has a bitter taste. In the recipes that specify blackstrap molasses, dark unsulfured molasses can be substituted. Both are used as an agent for fermentation, for coloring bread, and for flavoring.
    NUTS ANDSEEDS
    Choose only fresh nuts and seeds. The most important thing to remember is that nuts are high in fat, and unless stored properly (that is, in the freezer), they can go rancid quickly.
    Some of our recipes call for toasted nuts . To toast nuts, preheat the oven to 350°F. Spread the nuts evenly on a baking sheet. Bake for 5 minutes, stir, and bake for 2 to 5 minutes longer, or until lightly toasted and fragrant.
    Have on hand sesame, poppy, sunflower, and fennel seeds. In recipes that call for seeds, feel free to use whatever combination you like.
    OILS
    Have two types of oil on hand: extra-virgin olive oil and a light vegetable oil such as safflower oil or canola oil.
    OLIVES
    The Cheese Board uses high-quality brine- or oil-cured olives. Make sure when using olives in bread that they have been pitted. Squeeze machine-pitted olives by hand to make sure they are free of pieces of pit.
    SALT
    At the Cheese Board, we almost exclusively use sea salt, both fine and coarse, because we like its pure flavor. However, since kosher salt (a coarse-grained, additive-free salt) is readily available in supermarkets across the United States, we decided to use it for the recipes in this book. Be warned that, because of the