Top 5 Pro Baking Tips From Daisy’s Head Baker
Crack open the flour jar and the secrets too. Your best batch yet starts here.
Taya Shears is our biscuit queen and has been Lazy Daisy’s Head Baker for over two years. A stickler for quality and cleanliness, Taya knows her way around a perfectly flaky bake. Her Top Five Tips—while designed for large-scale baking—are game-changers for any home baker whipping up biscuits, cookies, or cakes in their own kitchen.
1. COLD butter is KEY! (when making any pastry)
Whether you’re baking biscuits, butter tarts, or pie dough, this baking rule is a must! If the butter is too warm, it will dissolve into your mix, and you’ll be left with a less flaky dough. To avoid this, I pop the butter in the fridge or freezer (whichever has more space) and I let it chill until it’s nice and firm. Room temperature butter has its place in many baking recipes, but a pastry dough isn’t one of them!
💡 Room-temp butter is great—for cookies, maybe. But pastry dough? Keep it chilly!
2. Avoid over-mixing
When I’m combining my dry and wet ingredients, I start by adding a little bit of the wet mixture to my dry mix, slowly mixing it all together until it’s just incorporated. This will keep your pastry nice and pillowy soft (because, trust me, no one likes a tough biscuit!). With Lazy Daisy biscuits, we roll them out by hand so if we missed any bits at the bottom of the bowl/mixer, we can still add them in while rolling, making sure we don’t overmix the dough...which is why we have some of the softest and fluffiest biscuits around!
🥣 Less mixing = more fluff.
3. Stay Organized
When you’re baking at home, keeping your work area tidy can help you stay organized and make the entire baking process more enjoyable. Clearing clutter from your countertops, washing dishes as you go, and putting away ingredients once you're finished with them are all simple ways to maintain a clean and efficient workspace. Do this, and you'll have a roomier workspace and less chance of spills and accidents.
🧼 Clean kitchen = smoother baking flow.
4. Pre-Measure Everything
In fancy terms—prep your ‘mise en place’—this way you are prepared for each step of your recipe without scrambling to chop, grate, or weigh your ingredients while your pot is bubbling over. I do this when I have a long list of biscuits to make or if I’m making multiple flavours or types of pastries. One thing that always helps me is pre-measuring my dry mixes, pre-cutting the butter (it then sits in the fridge so it doesn’t get too warm), and prepping whatever I’m going to use to flavour the dough (grated cheese, fruits, herbs, etc.). Doing this cuts my production time in half making it easier to produce more biscuits in a day. For a home baker, this could mean stress-free baking or more time to do other things.
⏱️ For home bakers, that means fewer headaches—and maybe even time to put your feet up.
5. Prioritize Sanitation
This is a BIG thing for me! Making sure that everything I use is properly sanitized is a key step which I never miss. Many people have food allergies and dietary restrictions, so I make sure that all surfaces, cutters, bowls, tables, and our mixer are clean. This is really important to keep in mind if you are baking for others, especially if your guests have food sensitivities (such as gluten intolerance).
🍽️ A clean kitchen is a kind kitchen.
BONUS TIP: Baking is a Science
If cooking is an art, then baking is a science...With cooking, you can add a ‘smidge’ of this and a ‘dollop’ of that without far-reaching repercussions. But if you start dolloping and smidging where you should be tablespooning and cupping, you may end up with gloop instead of ganache or blobs instead of biscuits! So when baking, be precise with your measurements, temperatures, and methods for the most delicious results.
🎯 Smidging when you should be measuring? That’s how biscuits become blobs.
Not ready to bake from scratch?
No problem! Try our Bake-at-Home Buttermilk Biscuits. Just pop them in the oven, and in 30 minutes you’ll be sinking your teeth into soft, buttery biscuits that taste like they came straight from Grandma’s kitchen. Enjoy!
🧡 Homemade comfort, no apron required.
