Muffin Method and Creaming Method
These methods give you information about the recipes without having to be explicit on steps. The creaming method can be used in Muffins, Cookies, Cakes and other baked goods. It consist of starting to mix you ingredients in a mixer and the two first ingredients will be your fat and your sugar. In our chocolate chip muffins we used granulated sugar and butter. Those go into the mixer first. Also note, as usual in baking, the temperature of your fat completely changes the results. In the creaming method you want the butter to be in room temperature but still cool (cool to touch but leaves an impression with you press you finger into it, between ˜63-68F). Colder fat makes the dough flakier and warmer will get them to not incorporate air as much and it may get too dense. Then, when you add your eggs, be sure to add them one at a time, let them incorporate in slow speed to be sure emulsification is going on. It is this emulsification that will make this batter less dense, so this is a critical step. After the eggs, you alternate the mix of wet ingredients and the mix of dry ingredients you have left. This is the creaming method.
The Muffin method is somewhat simpler, you mix all of your dry elements together till they incorporate and in a different bowl you mix all of your wet ingredients. You make a well on the dry mix and pour the wet mix in the middle, gently folding the dough. You don't want to overmix and generate gluten. The blueberry muffin in the pictures were made using the Muffin method and with this method you get a very fluffy paste.
The dinner rolls you see in pictures 1 and 2 were fermented using active dry yeast. The yeast is a single celled fungus humans have used for thousands of years to make great food (and drinks).
Since yeast is a living organism we need to be very careful with the temperature they are in. If you heat it too much you may kill the yeast and your dough will not grow. Let your dough double before punching it down and portioning it in a nice warm temperature.