Blog Post

Baking is a comfort hobby for many people. Whether digging your hands in and kneading dough or carefully detailing the decorations on a cake, different bakers have different specialties. But one thing they share is the need for a kitchen that supports their passion. From our experience building homes and remodeling kitchens, Kettler Forlines has developed a list of must-haves for a baker’s kitchen.

A decked-out center island

The center island does more than provide great workspace for rolling out dough, lining up cooling racks, and laying out your ingredients. In addition, the island in a baker’s kitchen has a sink so you don’t have to step away to wash your hands, tools, or baking trays. It makes sense to have a dishwasher there, too.

The center island workspace should have the right type of storage. Add a place for your cookbooks, maybe on shelves at each end of the island. Include a mixture of drawers and cabinets. Design the island with a vertical pull-out for your baking sheets. Set up a drawer to store the spices and extracts you commonly use, and another for small baking utensils, like measuring cups and spoons, cookie cutters, and spatulas. Add other deep drawers to store your mixing bowls.

With the right organization, you can do just about everything right there on your center island.

Dual wall ovens

The baking enthusiast often dives into more than one recipe at a time, or is juggling dessert with the meal prep. Having dual wall ovens allows you to set each one at a different temperature, which saves time and probably salvages some of your baked goods from being over- or under-baked because you had to compromise or guess on the temperature and time.

The other advantage of dual wall ovens is no more bending. Setting them at the right level makes it easy to check on the rise of your popovers, the golden color of your bread, and the status of your pie crust edge.

A walk-in pantry

Only a person who finds baking to be as relaxing as meditation can appreciate the variety of ingredients necessary to keep on hand. A variety of flours and sugars, for example. Yes, there are many! With a generously sized walk-in pantry, you can organize the staples as well as the extras, like chocolate chips (for which there are also many varieties).

If your pantry is big enough, you can also store your small appliances—everything from the hand mixer and food processor to the immersion blender and milk frother. Keep them all in one place where you can easily access them. 

A throne for the stand mixer

No serious baker is without a stand mixer. It is the heart of the activity, the one true must-have among appliances for the baker’s kitchen. If you use this essential kitchen appliance regularly, you might just keep it on the countertop, but wouldn’t it be great for a special space just for the mighty mixer? Here’s an idea: Open up a cabinet to a shelf that pulls out and lfts up to the same level as your countertop. holding your stand mixer. The mixer lift puts your beloved mixer within easy reach and makes it easy to tuck out of sight when you’re done.

A warming drawer to proof bread

In the last two weeks of March 2020, when people began sheltering at home in the early days of the pandemic, Twitter reported more than 500,000 daily tweets about cooking and baking—twice the number of tweets on these topics for the previous two weeks. For some reason, countless people decided that making sourdough bread was a good idea. 

A warming drawer is a must-have for anyone who bakes yeast bread and searches for a warm place to proof the dough. The proofing stage is when the yeast in the dough rises for the final time before baking. A warming drawer can fit perfectly into your cabinetry!

Is this finally the year you get the kitchen of your dreams? If you live in the DC Metro region, talk to us at Kettler Forlines Homes. Whether you want to build your dream home or convert your current kitchen into something spectacular, we’ll guide you through every step of the process, from design through construction. So…are you ready to get cooking?