Yet another benefit to baking: “to make sweetness where there is none.” I also loved the part about the sweetness of babies before “their wills sprouted like mushrooms.” Hope you enjoy the poem as I do! My mother cooked as drudgery the same fifteen dishes round and round like a donkey bound to a millstone… Read More Food Poem – The Scent of Apple Cake by Marge Piercy
I wanted to bake a cake for the baby of our chopped and blended family who is turning 12 today. Ree Drummond’s big four layer chocolate cake looked perfectly suited for my BIG personality daughter by marriage, Ava. As my reader friends know, I’m not the best at following recipes. I did wait three… Read More A Trifle Saves the (Birth)Day!
This chapter on enriched yeast breads continues to build on the techniques of quick breads and yeast breads. The increased amount of sugar and fat of breakfast pastries can inhibit the gluten from developing. Breads without too much fat can be mixed using the straight dough method, otherwise the sponge method is (where yeast is… Read More BakingPhil Project 4: Pecan Sticky Buns (Recipe 8.13)
I’ve reached chapter 7 about yeast breads in the textbook On Baking. This project could have easily been just about this chapter. It is overwhelming and challenging! Oh my…. Thank goodness I don’t have an exam to pass. The biology of yeast and the chemistry of fermentation and baking are complex. There are types of… Read More BakingPhil Project 3: Focaccia (Recipe 7.34)
On Approaching Seventy by Joan Seliger Sidney Watching the hands of my son kneading challah dough on the maple cutting board in my kitchen, a memory rises of my mother bending over our kitchen table in Flatbush, pressing, stretching, folding flour, water, eggs into a living elastic. Sometimes in my dreams, Mom appears, whispers of… Read More Baking – Poem
The last two mixing methods, biscuit and muffin have been exercises of gentility, of assembling an aggregate of ingredients. Learning to mix “just until combined.” It required trust that the heat of the oven will meld all the pieces into a final tasty product. This week’s mixing technique “creaming” usually seems partner to with “folding”… Read More BakingPhil Project 3: Lemon Tea Bread (Recipe 6.17)
I am not a morning person. The idea of morning glory seems to me ironic. I love irony. So, for the second bakingphil project I chose Morning Glory Muffins (Recipe 6.8) that employs the “muffin” method of mixing. Never made this before. What could be bad about a muffin that boasts nuts, fruits and spices?… Read More BakingPhil Project 2: Morning Glory Muffins
It may seem ironic that I’m embarking on this baking fest. After all, I started 2015 limiting wheat, milk, sugar, caffeine and red meat. On the opposite end of the spectrum, last night I enjoyed an unhealthy amount of delicious processed food in the forms of nachos, wings, tiny hot dogs, cookies, banana pudding and… Read More BakingPhil Project 1: Cream Scones
As long as I can remember, I loved to cook. Baking, however, intimidated me with its strange bipolar rhythm between energetic beating, whisking, rolling, folding and patient waiting to heat, cook and cool. But mostly, what scared me is its insistence on measurement. Recently, I’ve come to rethink baking as architecture. Baking is a measured… Read More Baking Philosopher Project
