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CommentsLessons in Getting Baked
I have found my calling. When the time is right, I’m quitting journalism and trading it in for a flour-dusted apron and a stand mixer. I want to be a bread baker. There’s a certain release—an outpouring of pent-up tension—that goes along with kneading dense bread dough by punching it hard with your fists and slamming your knuckles into that springy, yeasty mass. Then, when you’re finished, you can make sammiches.
I experienced that practical energy exchange for the first time ever during a professional baking course I took this summer at OTC with my friend and former GO art director, Kari Engel, and her mom, Laura Engel. Here’s how my five-week crash course in deliciousness shook down:
Week 1: Cookies
This week, our instructor whipped up pecan sandies, snickerdoodles, chocolate sugar cookies and pecan brownies and talked a lot about creaming. Creaming is what you do to mix the sugar and butter to make it fluffy. I think he must have used the word “cream” as a verb a few dozen times. Immature people should not take baking classes.
Week 2: Pies
Evil pies! I failed miserably. I think editors are incapable of pie baking because the crust-preparing task requires you to break up hunks of shortening into to walnut-sized pieces in flour. But I like uniformity. I kept compulsively breaking the pieces up smaller and smaller and smaller in an attempt to make them all equal in size. The crust was foul. Score one for evil pies and zero for me.
Week 3: Yeast Breads
This week was the most successful for me. I felt like an instant expert, molding tacky dough bits into knot-shaped dinner rolls, long baguettes, rustic-looking loaves and even my own odd creation: a basket weave. I could do this all day. My boyfriend, who reaped the benefits of this class when I pawned the treats off on him on Monday night, loved this class. “What’d you make this week?” he asked me when I got to his house. “Bread!” I grinned. “And I’m quitting my job!”
Week 4: Cake Baking
Scales! We used scales! What a glorious task for the editor-type. I was on a mission: The success of this cake relied entirely on how accurately I measured out the cake’s ingredients. I was focused. I was on. My devil’s food cake was not too shabby.
Week 5: Cake Decorating
This was when the editor mind began to check out. Unlike creative and brilliant writers, an editor’s main brain feature is precision. We like to measure, to be exact, to follow the rules to achieve the desired result. Editors are far less at home slapping icing on a cake and moving it around willy-nilly. I left this final class early to attend (I’m not ashamed) a Weird Al concert. Eat it.
Wanna Bake? Get Shakin'!
OTC's "Yeast Breads and Quick Breads" course is part of the Baking Certificate certification in its Culinary Arts program. The course is offered at various time throughout the academic year. For more information, check out OTC's academic catalog, or call the Academic Services office at 417-447-8160.
