Perfect Bake Pro Review - Review 2022

Baking terrifies people because they understand, instinctively if not consciously, that information technology's chemistry. Whereas a pasta dish won't exist ruined if y'all cook the penne a minute too long or if you add a footling too much oregano to the sauce, accidentally substitute a teaspoon of baking powder for a half-teaspoon of baking soda in a batch of cupcakes, and the results will exist as ugly as they are inedible. So for those who love breads, cookies, cakes, and more than, just are afraid to make them at habitation, the $99.99 Perfect Broil Pro is ideal: Information technology's an app–continued calibration that removes most of the guesswork and risk from baking recipes. It'due south not necessary for anyone who already has command of the kitchen, simply information technology volition go a long fashion toward helping everyone else conquer their fright of baking.

Pattern and Bones Usage
On its simplest level, the Perfect Bake Pro functions identically to the Perfect Drink Pro ($28.95 at Amazon) . The centerpiece of the packet is a simple, stainless steel digital Bluetooth scale. It has only four buttons—Timer, Bluetooth Pairing, On/Upwards, and Off/Down—to continue things stress-free, and a backlit display so you tin easily follow along fifty-fifty if the light isn't great in your kitchen. Also included are a prepare of 3 colorful nesting mixing bowls (you can use your own bowls, as well), an oven thermometer, and a stand for holding your tablet or phone upright while you lot're working. Note that because the Perfect Bake Pro and the Perfect Drink Pro operate on the same principles, you lot tin download the Perfect Drink app and follow its recipes, besides—you'll just demand to supply your own cocktail shaker.

Perfect Bake Pro

The scale links to an elegantly designed, free Perfect Broil app yous download to your Android or iOS. Once the two are linked (you'll be prompted to plow on the scale when you lot start the app), the scale will display the weight of whatever ingredients you're calculation, and the app volition nudge you along to make sure yous add only exactly what's needed, when it's needed, and that you perform the proper steps (mixing, blistering, and so on) for the correct periods of time. If you practice this, the theory goes, you never accept to worry well-nigh turning out substandard baked goods once more.

Perfect Broil App
With its bonny and friendly pattern, the Perfect Bake App will accept yous feeling practiced about all the bones chores needed to go dishes into and out of the oven. Big, clearly labeled icons for each step make full up almost in real time as you lot add ingredients. Interacting with the in-app timers is a snap, besides, and distinctive alarms will warning yous to key milestones fifty-fifty if y'all have to exit the kitchen for a moment. In case yous're not certain about what's involved with a specific procedure (such as creaming), definitions and even video demonstrations will announced on the screen to assist y'all.

And while all this is helpful in keeping you lot on track, you don't take to worry virtually getting off track, either. If you add also much of an ingredient, the app will automatically adjust the rest of the recipe to compensate for it. And if yous don't accept, say, the 10-inch cake pan a recipe calls for, you can scale down for the eight-inch pan you practice own, and the app will tweak everything accordingly. Because fifty-fifty the savviest bakers can have problem correcting, especially on the wing, this is one of the Perfect Broil's most compelling features.

Perfect Bake Pro app

No matter how your tastes run, you'll find a recipe catering to yous in the Perfect Bake app. There are hundreds to cull from, divided up between recipe blazon (such as Staff of life, Brownies & Bars, Cakes, Cookies, Snacks, and more), difficulty (Unproblematic, Advanced), and special categories (Child-Friendly, Gluten-Free, Payard Cookies from French pastry chef François Payard's 2022 self-titled cookbook), and more are existence added constantly past way of freely downloadable recipe packs.

Quite a bit of what you lot'll detect is predictable; at that place are recipes for, amid many others, standards such as angel food cake, brownies, chocolate flake cookies, popovers, and even whipped foam (if yous don't call up yous need a recipe for this, information technology'due south but because you lot've never ended up with butter after leaving the mixer on a minute too long). The sweets are a scrap more than broad-ranging than the savory dishes, though. If you lot're interested in bread, you'll detect brioche, ciabatta, pita, pretzel breadstuff, and even pizza dough, but there's no recipe for a straightforward white sandwich bread or a whole wheat loaf. Like banana bread? And so do I, simply I prefer mine without a lot of boosted fussiness—just merely Assistant Beer Bread, Banana Pecan Bread, and Banana Spice Bread are offered in in the app. And the Gluten-Free Pound Cake is the but variation there is of that archetype dessert. For a system aimed at beginning bakers, you'd think there'd be more staple recipes.

The good news is that if you have a favorite recipe of your own, you lot tin can add it to the app yourself. You'll build the process from scratch, and what you create will look and work simply like the built-in recipes (you'll have to take and add photos yourself, though, if you want them to look just as lip-smacking). At that place's no manner to share your recipes with other Perfect Bake users, however.

As well handy is the integrated ingredient tracker, which tin lookout man your pantry and tell you what you may need to buy for any given recipe, and so create a shopping list from what it finds. If you take advantage of all of the Perfect Bake'southward capabilities, your shopping trips should be as successful as the time you spend in the kitchen.

Unevenly Baked
Equally practiced every bit then much of the Perfect Bake Pro is, a few issues may arise if you lot don't have the proper background and experience. They can all exist overcome, merely if you're humble of setting your KitchenAid to any speed higher than stir, they could be stumbling blocks.

Although each individual recipe page gives y'all lots of details nearly the dish and tells y'all the guess time (both agile and inactive) you'll spend making it, it doesn't tell yous the yield (how many cookies you lot'll go, for example), and to preview the steps ahead of time—which yous should ever do—you have to tap into the recipe and do a whole lot of inconvenient swiping. It may be a lot of piece of work just to make up one's mind it's something you don't have the fourth dimension or the patience to do.

In that location'due south also a bit of inexactness within the recipes themselves. The app uses exclusively timing to gauge when recipes are finished, just because non all ovens are the same, that's non enough; physical and visual cues are at least as important. Knowing that cookies should come out after a sure period of time and when the edges are set merely the centers are soft will ensure that they aren't overbaked, only if you go by timing lone your snickerdoodles could dry out. And, though the app suggested I "check" recipes, information technology never once advised me to swap or rotate cookie sheets or baking pans, which would compensate for uneven oven heating.

For American bakers, the app may also have a bit of getting used to. Ingredients are measured in grams by default, which tin be odd for things like butter (which we typically mensurate in tablespoon increments) or tiny amounts of dry out ingredients like common salt or yeast. Yeah, this will result in more exact recipes, but few cookbooks and websites need quite this level of fussiness across the lath. That said, you can change the app'due south settings to use the American system.

The Recipes
What ultimately matters with a production like this, yet, are the recipes, and my PCMag colleagues were all too happy to swap their tech tests for taste tests on several occasions to permit me know what they thought of those in the Perfect Broil Pro.

Perfect Bake Pro testing

The system scored high marks for its Pull-Apart Rolls, which compared favorably with my go-to recipe from Melt'south Illustrated, fifty-fifty if they were squatter and a flake drier. And our resident gluten-gratuitous analyst adored the moist and rich Flourless Peanut Butter cookies; I'g passionately pro-gluten, just even I thought they were unusually tasty.

The well-baked, silver dollar-size Gourmet Chocolate Chip Cookies and the larger and thicker 250-Dollar Cookies (a variation on the esteemed Neiman Marcus recipe, essentially chocolate bit oatmeal cookies with pecans) were more divisive; there's no of convincing a lover of chewy chocolate fleck cookies that something slightly tougher is okay. But in no example did anyone strenuously object, and the lack of leftovers was in many ways its own success story.

Conclusions
If you're new to the kitchen, or if you lot only want to strop your blistering skills, the Perfect Bake Pro is an fantabulous fashion to do then, and yous'll undoubtedly exist surprised by the quality of the resulting baked goods and the ease with which you create them. And no matter what you, your family, and your friends like, yous'll find plenty of recipes to devour.

Information technology'southward worth remembering, however, that you don't need any of this. If yous accept a digital scale and precise measuring instruments of your own, and if you read a recipe through thoroughly before starting it, you'll be able to turn out dishes as as good as those you can make via the Perfect Bake Pro—and you'll have an even wider variety to choose from. Scientific though baking may be, information technology's not impossible equally long as you pay close attention, and you don't need a Bluetooth calibration and an app to do that. Just if you demand or want additional hand-belongings until yous're ready to strike out on your own, the Perfect Bake Pro is the perfect solution.