With baking equipment readily available, specialist ingredients offered in home baking quantities, and countless recipes online, it’s easier than ever to learn to bake. However, the art of some specialist baking methods continues to intimidate even the best home cooks.

On this ExpertTrack, you’ll gather essential baking skills to build your confidence in the kitchen and conquer different baking methods.

You’ll discover techniques and tips from BBC Good Food, baking experts with over 30 years of experience, to learn how to create everything from sweet and savoury pastry to mouthwatering macarons.

Rather than simply follow a set of instructions, you’ll learn how to read and amend recipes to suit your style of baking, how to pick the right ingredients, and the specialist equipment you might need.

Build skills to succeed with sourdough recipes

Starting with nothing more than flour, water, and salt you’ll learn to make and care for your own sourdough starter that you will go on to use for breads, rolls, and pizza bases.

You’ll learn about autolyse, how to prove successfully, why shaping correctly is essential, how to score, and what works when baking in a domestic oven.

You’ll also discover how to change your flours, add flavourings, and develop your artistic talents. Plus– to ensure no food is wasted, you’ll learn how to turn any leftover mix into pancakes, flatbreads, and cookies to expand your baking skills even further.

Learn how to perfect your pastry

The baking science behind pastry making is key to avoid the dreaded soggy bottom! The course will help you master a series of savoury and sweet pastry-based dishes, exploring techniques for making shortcrust, puff, rough-puff, flaky, and hot water crust pastries. You’ll also learn about decorating with pastry and adding flavour.

Discover the secrets to a spiffing afternoon tea

Served at many of the finest hotels and restaurants in the world, afternoon tea is a benchmark of fine baking.

This ExpertTrack will teach you five different kinds of bakes often found within a classic afternoon tea. You’ll discover how to perfect the simplicity of scones, delicate sugar biscuits, and fresh-baked madeleines as well as colourful eclairs and macarons.

Take your cake making to the next level

Nothing builds excitement at an occasion like the appearance of an amazing cake. You’ll learn how to evaluate the structural design of cakes, investigate textures and flavours that match well, and interrogate edibility versus appearance.

You’ll also learn techniques such as crumb coating, frosting, and patterning cakes, as well as how to make perfect drips and build gravity-defying cakes.

By the end of this ExpertTrack, you’ll have the confidence and amazing tasting bakes to show off your new baking skills to friends and family.