"The Science and Magic of Baking: Breaking the Rules to Create Delicious Delights"

 ABOUT THIS BLOG

The world of making food is often split between people who love to cook and people who love to bake. Every dessert party that I throw I have a number of people come up to me and tell me that they absolutely love the desserts and they wished they could bake the way I do. Then they confess that they don’t really bake very well, but they are more of a cook.

Delving into the Dichotomy: That’s when the conversation veers toward the difference between cooking and baking. To most people cooking is an art. It’s something that you can be creative at, designing a dish on the fly. While you cook, you can adjust the seasonings, you know what to put in the pan/pot/skillet to make a close proximity of the end product and you can taste while cooking, making adjustments as you go along.

The Love for Baking: The argument then follows that while cooking is art, baking is a science that requires strict adherence to measurements and instructions. You make a mistake in the measurement, and the cake falls or the cookies burn. While this is true, this discounts the fact that once you understand the underlying reason behind the measurements and the instructions, you can start taking liberties with them. Once you understand the WHY behind the rules, you can start bending them, changing them, making them yours. Baking just requires that one extra step on understand.

                 And that’s when I tell them why I love baking so much. I love following rules (or, more to the point, learning how to break them) and I love mixing batter together, using gobs of butter and sugar. I love figuring out the why behind what I’m doing.                                                                                     And I absolutely love the feeling of putting something that can only be described as goop in the oven, and having the kitchen and the entire apartment start to smell of something wonderful.                                                                                                                                                              And then there’s the moment of opening the oven up, where you find that goop has magically transformed into the perfectly brown pie/cake/cookie/brownie/loaf of bread that I’ve made. Baking may be science, but it’s also magic. A wonderful accessible magic that anyone and everyone should partake in. Everyone needs to eat.

 

The Special Nature of Baking: Whether it’s the New Year dinner with the turkey and all the side fixings to the quick sandwich you make while running out the door, people need to eat on a daily basis and that inevitably means that people need to cook. But BAKING. People don’t eat dessert every day. They eat desserts on special occasions. When you make cookies, you don’t bake a batch just for yourself (or perhaps you do, in which case, lucky you!). You bake for yourself, and for other people too. Baking inherently is for sharing, for enjoying, for celebrating. Cooking is necessary. A need. Baking is special. It’s a want. And that is why I love to bake.