All successful muffin and quick bread recipes are based on a well-proportioned combination of fats, proteins, carbohydrates, and leavening agents, all in a bounty of wet and dry forms (most commonly, sugar, butter, eggs, buttermilk, baking soda and all-purpose flour). But how do you keep your proportions balanced when experimenting with different kinds of dry ingredients (bran, whole-wheat flour, gluten-free rice flour, etc.) or wet ingredients (oil, brown sugar, tofu, pumpkin, and so on)? When I merely want to substitute an ingredient for a similar one, a good general-purpose cookbook that includes a table of equivalents and substitutions, such as The Joy of Cooking, really comes in handy. Of course, if you really want to go nuts, there's a lot of work out there on culinary ratios, and I always keep a guide to PH levels in canned food nearby. Really, though, the way to figure out what is good is to keep baking and experimenting. You might have to throw something out once in a while, but as your knowledge and instincts develop you will be able to better guess what will work -- just be sure to record your successes.
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