Revamping my pantry for better organization and efficiency

Hi Bold Bakers, normally when you see me in a video I'm all ready for a camera, I'm making something beautiful and my kitchen is beautifully clean. But not today. We've been making tons of recipes, doing bulk shoots, making lots of things for the academy and my kitchen and my pantry is upside down. Rather than get in there really fast and not let anybody see it and clean it up, I thought why not show you what really goes on in my pantry when nobody's looking. Before I open these doors, I just want to say, don't judge me too harshly. Okay, so here's my pantry. So this is my stuff for dinner. This is grains and pasta and stuff and things down there for George. But this is my baking drawer. It has taken quite a beating. It's messy, it's floury, there's random stuff, I don't even know why there's a bag floating around in there. So I'm going to go through everything. And we're going to tidy it up a little bit and I'm going to show you how you can better organize your pantry so it doesn't look like my pantry. Okay so let's start over here. I use a lot of honey for baking. I do enjoy partaking in a margarita every now and again so I'm well stocked with agave. But one thing that should be in there is a tub to catch all the sticky stuff. Should be in there. Those ingredients are so sticky and they get everywhere so just put them in their own little space so they stay tidy. Let me see what's this. milk malted powder I haven't used this in years May 2017 okay that's the end of that oh my cocoa powder I do enjoy splurging on good cocoa powder it makes all the difference I love this brand jars so this is in my baking drawer I have some tapioca pudding which I haven't actually used yet I should use that I wonder what date is yeah 24 October 2001 okie dokie we're learning no show me that okay 2021 what should I say you said 2001 oh no 2021 yeah I'm learning a lot about myself I don't like waste but I also like to throw stuff out here I have oh dulce de leche so you know that when I make um banoffee pies uh boiled cans of condensed milk I always boil a few at a time so just make sure that you label them because the label comes off in the water dulce de leche keep that in there for whenever you would need it next here I have a random bowl of white and brown sugar mixed together I'm guessing that is because I was low on brown sugar and tried to thin it out with white sugar so I'm going to mix that into another brown sugar same ingredients peanut butter this lives up here because this is not my baking peanut butter I recommend when baking where is my baking peanut butter when baking with peanut butter it's always best to use the kind of generic oily kind of peanut butter. This one is a nice homemade one. This is for George and for Kevin and I. Jif, Sif, whatever it's called, use those ones. Skippy. Here is, this is very bold. Now for all of those out there who are watching this, don't do this. A little jar that is not labeled with some random white stuff in it that I actually have to taste to see what it is. I'm guessing, I'm guessing it's baking powder yeah it's baking powder okay I'm not going to use that because I don't know how long it's been there but make sure that you label your jars that's really important my vanilla paste I love vanilla paste it's much cheaper than vanilla pods you can get this brand here it's called Nielsen vanilla I got them on Amazon I really like them they also sell cheap vanilla beans always have that handy I just really like that okay I'm going to show you something here first off I want to out by saying you know how I love to make everything homemade from scratch there's a few things though as a uh as when when you get into developing food styling food making things look beautiful for camera there's certain things you have do you have to use box frosting because i'll tell you why it's really thick it is really good when it gets really hot in the kitchen and in LA, it gets like very hot during the summertime. And if you're frosting a cake and it's really hot and it's soft and melty, this stuff is really, really great. And let me just tell you that I'm not the only person that uses this. Pretty much every food stylist uses fake frosting because it's just so pliable. It works so well and it doesn't melt under hot conditions. So that's why I always keep a little bit here. Here's a Oreo just like randomly out of a packet. So you shouldn't do that. Keep them in the packet. Oh, it's stale. Okay. Yeah, we're gonna pack those. So here's what I like to do. I'm going to vacuum seal these because I don't use Oreos very often, but I like to keep them nice and fresh. I'm going to vacuum seal these so they'll last much longer. Okay, making progress. Oh, look at this. I did label something. Baking powder labeled. I know exactly what it is. Perfect. What we got over here, Maraschino cherries. These remind me of the seventies and actually I wasn't born in the seventies. I remember the eighties because I was born in the eighties of Knickerbocker glories of a Tiffin slices of ice cream sundaes, banana splits. They're kind of a necessary evil. I love them for food photography and they just look so bright and so beautiful. I have them in a lot of my photos and they are. I always have them around because you never know when you might need one for a photo. So that is that. This is some random sticky stuff. I've literally no idea what that is. OK, no. Now, let me see. I'm going to give a little bit of a wipe down here. Honey, maple syrup. Sorry that goes in there. Here I have my baking beans. These are for when I'm blind baking pie crusts. I don't use baking beans because or beads because they're very expensive and you don't get a whole lot in a pack so buy a cheap bag of rice cheap bag of beans lentils whatever it is use these just for baking that's why they live on my baking drawer just for baking you don't cook these after you bake with them but they work really well and they're really inexpensive the salt there we have half an Oreo you know what i'm gonna ask Kevin about this because i don't think that was me and we have another jar that's not labeled oh there we go cinnamon a little trick working in professional kitchens there are a few things that are coveted that when you get in early you grab them and you make sure you have enough at least for that day blue tape this is painters tape the reason that we use this is because in the kitchen in professional kitchens you label everything with painters tape it comes off really easy it sticks on stuff really easily you can write on it and the thing about it is it's blue So this is cinnamon. Think about it. There's a method to our madness. There's no blue food. So if this comes off, if it ends up getting mixed into something, you're going to see it straight away. It stands out. That's why you use blue painter's tape to label stuff. So that's just a little trick for you. And it's really inexpensive. Get it at the hardware store. Espresso powder. Espresso powder is really, really important with this again with that. No, I don't know what that is. Oh, evaporated milk. Very important. When I go to the supermarket and I'm buying stuff, I always grab condensed milk and evaporated milk, but I never do a stock take of what I already have. So I end up with one, two, three, four, four, five cans of evaporated milk. So if there's a run on evaporated milk, I'm selling it for $10 a jar. Baking soda labeled very good Gemma. Learning my lesson condensed milk look at that. They're not going to catch me out when there's a shortage on condensed milk. Oh, look at that Oreos. So those should be vacuum sealed. The centers are taken out I would say we were making cheesecakes. We took out the centers and they need to be vacuum sealed. So I'm going to vacuum seal those in a few minutes. Here I have a little bit of brown sugar. This This brown sugar is a little bit different because I think it's like a demerara sugar. So it's a sugar that we would get in England and in Ireland. It's different course. It's not what I use for baking. I think, I'm not sure why that's in there, but that's, I don't use that for baking. So we'll put that over to the side. Here I have some crushed up graham crackers for bases. Here I have some graham crackers. These need to be vacuum sealed. When you vacuum seal stuff, it lasts forever. It lasts for months and months and months. and with the amount of food production that we do and just how I love to like be prepared with our meals for the family and all those sorts of things I love to vacuum seal. A perfect example vacuum sealed matcha oh no wait this is green this is matcha powder. We use this in a drink and I think we used it in a recipe. I use it very rarely but it keeps perfectly in this vacuum sealed bag. This is not an ad for vacuum sealers. This is semolina flour and I think I saw semolina over here. For some reason, I have three bags of semolina flour. I need one of those pantries where like when you're in the supermarket, you can press a button and find out what's in there so you don't buy extra. I'm going to put this in here. I like semolina flour to make pasta and I like it when I'm making homemade pizzas. I obviously like it a lot because I have three bags, but however, I'll give a little bit more of a dusty dust. Here I have some cinnamon sugar. we always need cinnamon sugar it could be for cinnamon rolls it could be for um tossing a cookie in for Christmas like so many different things and I end up making lots of batches so here's a nice big bag of cinnamon sugar there is some more condensed milk you live over here there's a cookie in there I'll have that later Nutella of course nice big tub of Nutella those cookies uh are definitely stale so say goodbye bye to those I have some cupcake wrappers in here which don't actually live in here, they have their own home. Maybe I'll show you that drawer another day. But they don't live in there. This is just food. Oh, look at that vacuum sealed. These are ginger nuts, ginger, ginger, not what you call them in America, ginger snaps, ginger nuts. These are what I use at Christmas time. And I love to make cheesecake base around the holidays, or just in general with ginger snap cookies, super good molasses see a little bit spicy loads of flavor. Okay, look, you can tell that we're making progress here. And it's getting nice and tidy as we go. Wheat flour. Now, this is very bold. Wheat flour lives in the fridge. It lives in the fridge because it has kind of like a higher with the wheat germ and the endosperm. It has more fat in this flour, unlike regular white flour, so it can go rancid pretty quickly. So what this does is we put this in the fridge so that lives in the fridge and will clean my fridge another day. You can also keep it in the freezer and it will last forever. I keep it always generally always in the fridge or in the freezer. I have to say this is coming together pretty well isn't it? Is that more semolina flour? You've got to be kidding me. Another little trade secret, when you do a lot of food styling and photos, food for photography and for our website and stuff like that sometimes you'll have to use box cake mix but it's because if we are doing a day recently we shot around 15 different types of frostings and we weren't going to make a whole pile of cakes to go with all the frostings so we made base box cake and then we were just able to put our frostings on different flavors of box cake. It's just so much faster for us to make these things. Of course being a European I have to have a bag of self-raising flour in my cupboard. The difference between using the US self-raising flour and the European self-raising flour is that in America they add salt into it so be very very very careful when you are baking with self-raising flour and adding extra salt into the recipe, be it a cake or scones or something like that, because it's already quite salty. So that's just a little bit of knowledge for you. There is more random cookies. I'll put those, I'll eat those. And there we have, look at, it's all kind of starting to take, look, see now, more cinnamon sugar. This is what happens. You get really busy. We do so many different things. We're moving a hundred miles an hour and we end up at the end of the day with 10 pots of cinnamon sugar so we put this in here we save space there's no waste and here I have a five pound tub of baking powder now let me tell you who needs a five pound tub of baking powder nobody nobody needs this I've had it for four years don't ever buy baking powder in such large quantities it is not a smart move but anyway it's still active it's still there it's grand one last thing that I forgot to show you is black um cocoa powder this is like doubly dutched it is a really mild flavor it's rich it's really good if you ever have the opportunity to bake with black cocoa I strongly recommend it my friend Brian Hart Hoffman turned me on to it so I just want to show you one last thing down here I have big bins for food because we bake in such large amounts that we need a large amount of flour and sugar so I've had these little wheelie bins when I got the cabinet maker to make the pantry I got him to make me an area for these bins so I have bins full of sugar and flour so on busy baking days we just pull them out and wheel them around the kitchen okay so it's looking a little bit better I'm going to vacuum seal those cookies and then I can put them in there I think we're done so a few years ago I asked Santa for a vacuum sealer for Christmas. So this is probably the best Christmas present I've ever gotten. And maybe also the most saddest, lamest sentence I've ever said, but you know what? I don't care. I love it. And it makes me happy. So you can vacuum seal anything. One time on TikTok, I actually did a video around the holidays of me vacuum sealing cookies because I just love to vacuum seal so much. There's something kind of, I think, satisfying about it look at all my cookies make a bit of a shorter bag it's this easy so look at that i vacuum sealed them really tight because these are going to be for a cookie base for cheesecake something like that so it doesn't matter if they break if i've learned anything today is to make sure that we label everything because that's what grown-ups do and i am a grown up okey dokey lovely we're all organized so just in the amount of nap time i'm two i'm two george is two in case you didn't know that so george is up from his nap and it was just the right amount of time for me to organize at least one shelf of the pantry which i am super proud of georgie look isn't that nice that no you can't eat that there you go a little behind the scenes look into my pantry and what goes on here in our house if you'd like to see more videos like this let us know in the comments below we have always a lot going on and we have a lot to share and who doesn't want to see more of little baby george so thanks so much for watching and i'll see you again soon say goodbye goodbye goodbye goodbye mommy you're going to the hospital i didn't go to the hospital george you're going to Ireland the other day in the plane i went to the plane where did i go on the plane to Ireland i did and who did i see in ireland Cows. I did see cows in Ireland, that's true.