4 posts tagged “baking”

This summer, I seem to be relearning the art of baking a cake.  I hadn't baked a cake for six months or so before this summer, and I'd done perhaps one per year for several years before that.  That isn't enough to keep your hand in.  Cakes are unlike any other baked item.  You must be Intuitive with cakes.  You must have an Instinct for cakes.  You must Understand cakes. 

And if you don't practice by making one once in a while, the cake will cackle evilly as it flattens itself on the bottom of the pan.

(This is what happens when you decide to blog rather than try any longer to sleep.  You start psychoanalyzing baked goods.  Let this be a lesson to you all.)

Recently there has been all sorts of flutter at The Bookstore about how we all need to "push" electronic books.  I am disgusted and repelled.  Oh, yes, I understand in theory that ebooks are a neat idea, that you can read them on your iPhone/Kindle/Blackberry, that they are often cheaper than their bound counterparts.  I know I'm paranoid.  I know I'm hopelessly out of date.  But I loathe the idea of electronic books and all they represent to me.  That which is electronic and seen on a screen is ephemeral.  It doesn't exist in a physical sense.  It is seen, read, perhaps even enjoyed--and then tossed in the programmable trash can in preparation for something else.

You can't change the words in a physical book.  You can't (as easily) delete a physical book.  No electronic byte, bit or megakilagigawhatsit can replace the feel of a battered old paperback or a brand-new-you-just-cracked-the-spine-for-the-first-time hardcover.  Nor can it replace the smell of an old leatherbound book that has sat on the shelf of a pipe-smoking professor for forty years.  (Though saints preserve me from sheet music that has sat in a cigarette smoker's house for the same amount of time.)

Helene Hanff only had nightmares about "huge monsters in academic robes carrying long bloody butcher knives labeled Excerpt, Selection, Passage and Abridged."  I wonder what she'd think of a world where beautiful books were slowly being replaced by an image that doesn't actually exist.  I suspect I'd enjoy hearing her scalding comments on such a situation.

Really, I swear that cakes and ebooks have a connection.

When I was but a young diva and starting to learn the Fine Art of Cake Creation, I fell deeply in love with an ancient and battered-beyond-belief copy of Fannie Farmer's Cooking.  That book details precisely how to cook virtually anything, from milk toast (which isn't quite so revolting as it sounds) to a roast chicken to tea to Desserts.

I still don't own a copy of this book, though it is in print.  I want rather badly to come across an older edition--say, 50-60 years old--in hardcover in a bookstore or even online, rather than spend $10 on a silly little paperback that will never stay open to the recipe I want and that won't have the history or FEEL of an older book.

I'm having cake-related ideas, though, and googled a rather unusual cake name this evening to see if the recipe was available online.  Surprise!  Fannie Farmer's Cooking is online in entirety (I hope) courtesy of Bartleby.com, which I've used occasionally for poems or some such for an English class.

This leaves me in the rather peculiar position of decrying ebooks with might and main on one hand and being utterly delighted that this book is available in such form on the other.

(My sweet tooth is coming out strongly on the side of "the other", while my waistline has cast a strong vote for the former.)

Humph.

There's a quote I only half remember about someone standing athwart history and howling "STOP!!!!".  Sometimes I feel like that person. 

Recently, I decided to try making my own bread.  I tried one recipe with decidedly mixed results: the bread looked gorgeous, but it was extremely bland and had a tendency to crumble.  Worked well for toast, but that's about it.

Meh.  I like toast--particularly with raspberry fruit butter from Central Market, mmmm--but I wanted a bread from which I could make sandwiches and the like.  Besides, the recipe was for white bread, and while I love a good white bread, it isn't so healthy as whole wheat.

A bit of searching later, I came across this gem of a recipe.  It looked simple enough for a relative newbie to the world of bread-baking, it used ingredients I already had, and the reviews all said that it was tasty.

I spent last Sunday afternoon creating a batch.  Instead of three loaves--I don't own loaf pans yet, and my oven isn't big enough for more than two baking sheets to cook evenly--I made two big loaves and baked them for a bit longer.  The spreading of a little butter (juuuuust enough so that the tops of the loaves had butter on them, no more) post-baking made the bread chewy but not tough or crumbly throughout.  It makes excellent sandwiches, and freezes perfectly well.  I ended up cutting both loaves in half and freezing all but one half in individual bags.  Bakers with more than one person or who themselves eat bread every day would probably leave one or even both of the loaves unfrozen, but I'll go through just about a half or a bit more each week, so it would be wasted if not frozen.

Kneading is also extremely therapeutic--meditational, really.

I'm vaguely wondering if this would make a good bread pudding, and am considering turning one of the halves into a bread pudding at some point in the future.

The one thing I notice is that it is a little sweet.  Not obnoxiously so, mind you, and the recipe uses honey rather than white sugar to sweeten, which is good.  I think I may cut the honey down by a tablespoon or two the next time I make it, but the bread is good as it is.

For the record: a slice or two of homemade toast with raspberry topping, a sliver of really good swiss cheese, and a pot of tea make a marvelous afternoon tea sort of meal.

(Of course, it would be even better shared with people--Carapiccoladiva, you bring the cookies, FlamingoDancer, you're in charge of cake, preferably chocolate, and PatrickXFCE, you can provide the background music.  All other bloggers welcome, too! )

That being said, afternoon tea is extremely pleasant when taken with a book in hand, a cat at your feet politely requesting cheese and toast bits, and something early (Corelli, Scarlatti, et all) on Pandora.

I suddenly got the urge to bake today.  Maybe because baking=comfort, maybe because it's just been too long...mine is not to reason why.

Mine is but to bake.

Ergo, I did.

I haven't made bread in...oh, about a decade or so.  It really was time.

So I whipped up two loaves of bread and a batch of oatmeal-raisin-spice cookies.

The house smells of yummy.

I'm freezing one of the loaves and half the cookies for a non-cooking week (say, the week before finals).

I'm thinking oatmeal and toast for breakfast.

(And yes, coffee.)

There is a hint of coolness and freshness in the air.  The leaves are turning to gold and the occasional red, and while the colors are, I must confess, nothing like those of my first home's state (sorry, nothing really beats the Connecticut maples in September), I can still enjoy their beauty.  It's a very short time in Texas; I know that it'll last only a few weeks.  Perhaps that makes it doubly precious.

And what could be more fall-like than a spice cake with orange frosting, or a cake of gingerbread with hot lemon sauce to pour over it?  Add a mug of hot tea aside either of those, and you have a desert fit for anyone.

I'm feeling that fall baking urge.  I shall try not to succumb. 

There should be a 12-step program for bakers who need nothing added to their waistlines.