My first proper hobby; Baking

Over a year ago I found that I had very few skills in the kitchen and figured that was a personal failure that needed to be addressed. Of the various disciplines of kitchen craft, I chose baking to introduce myself to my own kitchen. I haven’t regretted that decision since and I would like to talk about how much I have come to enjoy this hobby.

Starting simple

My original goal was to learn how to bake a loaf of bread. It seemed simple enough. You could buy bread from anywhere and the ingredients, when you got down to it, were flour, salt, water and yeast. While all of this was true the number of nuances that I had no idea existed in simply baking a loaf of bread was made very apparent to me as I continued to practise. The quality of the flour, the additives that can change the crust and texture of the loaf, how you go about kneading it, how long you prove the dough for and how many times to prove the loaf are all factors that contribute to your final product.

Eventually I graduated into making biscuits, cookies as well as brownies. Once again achieving success was a relatively simple affair. It’s difficult to mess up a cookie recipe and brownies are not that much harder. But the amount of customization and complexity is entirely at your discretion.

• What do you want to add to your cookies?
• What kind of texture do you enjoy for your brownies?
• Would you prefer to have dark, milk or white chocolate?

One breakthrough I made with cookies is to only use dark brown sugar. The extra molasses gives the dough more flavour and couple that with giving the dough a few hours to rest before baking and I ended up with some much nicer cookies.

I can do this! What else can I do?

Taking an unfamiliar recipe, walking through it and having a successful outcome has done wonders for my confidence in the kitchen. One of the great things about the Internet is so many of these recipes are not only readily and freely available to you, but they’re also peer reviewed. Couple that with YouTube channels such as Bingeing With Babish and you get people who can give you a recipe, show you how it’s done and show you how to customise it for your particular tastes.

There is a certain level of satisfaction that I get when I have worked to create batches of cookies, brownies and other sweet treats that I take into the office and people tell me how much they’ve enjoyed them and that they look forward to them. In fact I often only bake sweet things when I can take them into the office since a plate of cookies will have a short life expectancy in my house!

The great divide

Interestingly I have found that there is something of a kitchen divide between the cooks and the bakers. I don’t know why, but a lot of people don’t seem to want to make that hop over the fence. They are treated as very separate and distinct disciplines but I feel everyone should have at least a couple of items from both camps in their pocket.

So, I would like to implore cookers who have been fearful of attempting to do baking to try it. You would be surprised at how much success you can achieve with very little effort. Like me, once you’ve gotten your feet wet I’m sure you will glide into more creative and complex items.

And don’t worry, you don’t have to watch The Great British Bake Off but puns about a soggy bottom are always appreciated.