Pie is such a gift. My wife died nearly ten years ago and soon afterwards, I took up pie baking, which is something that she loved to do (I just loved to eat it — since childhood I've had a birthday pie instead of cake). I had all the stuff, after all. I got good at it and love to share them with friends at gatherings, or even just give them away entirely. Right before COVID, I did a Friday Pie Day thing where I gifted a pie to someone in town based on social media discussions. One time, someone got it for her coworkers who had just shipped a tough release.
Totally. I started baking pies because it was a tradition in my family and my wife can’t cook. To make sure my kids had the family food tradition I learned to bake. Once you get a system down, like anything else, it’s not that hard. Plus pie filling has time to bloom if you make it day before. Pie dough can be made ahead and freezes well. Individually these things aren’t hard or time consuming.
I started making my own simple bread and now I can’t eat store bought bread. Just takes like sawdust to me. It’s not really all that hard. Add a little rosemary and some olive oil and it’s delicious. No need to fuss over sourdough (over rated in my opinion). Over time you learn how ingredients work and what ratios work. So becomes easier and easier. I can throw together amazing corn bread and be eating it a little more than half hour later.
When everyone got into baking early covid I couldn’t understand why no one was baking anything, like, good. No pizza or pie or cake or muffins or banana bread or even a damn focaccia. The world collectively just decided the end-all be-all of baking was… sourdough.
Sourdough is fantastic, I have two loaves finishing their overnight chill in my fridge right now, will bake them after dinner.
I was baking sourdough since before the pandemic, and will continue baking in the future. It's a bit of work, but it's not too much work and the results are pretty damn fantastic.
Focaccia though, if I baked that regularly I'd have to go back on a GLP-1. Focaccia taught me to read the seals on olive oil in the supermarket and actually pick the right one for the break.
I can't figure out what "seals" or "break" mean in this sentence. What am I missing here?
Seals as in the certifications on the bottle.
Break is an autowrong. Should be bread.
they possibly meant nutrition label and bread
They are possibly capable of answering the question themselves.
>Focaccia taught me to read the seals on olive oil in the supermarket and actually pick the right one for the break.
Come on, you can't just drop that morsel without telling us what we should be looking for in the right olive oil for focaccia.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YCt2txu11d4
Great video that talks about selecting the olive oil for your use case and which seals aren't just self granted. I personally have been using colavita. Its fantastic.
I hate it but it's taught me that freshness actually matters. I bought some for focaccia and it was amazing. Saved it in the pantry for special occasions. Went back six months later and it had zero flavor. Just tasted like generic oil. Flat.
It ruined me
Wait, did I write this? Same, same, same.
I do find it kind of wild how intimidating most people I know find baking. Get a food scale and follow the directions and you're good to go and will have something respectable and delicious. As with anything, you can dive deep and go extreme with it. But baking delicious food is not rocket science.
Funny you'd say that. Other people say cooking is art, while baking is a science. No room for errors.
It wasn't for no reason at all though. There were concerns about availability of yeast, which isn't used in sourdough. (Valid concerns or not, I have no idea.)
Sourdough is the bomb though. I agree about the lack of variety, but in its defense, sourdough starter can be used for a variety of other baked goods.
Plus bread itself is used in other recipes, like sandwiches or toasts or for mopping up sauced dishes.
For one thing, yeast was in short supply, so if you wanted to bake regularly, sourdough was a good option if you could keep it going.
Maybe because the large time investment and trial+error in making good dough provided something to focus on when stuck inside.
Well, as a less-advanced baker, I get the most pleasure from baking bread.
Plus, I can eat it without getting fat.
Not trying to gain weight when being stuck inside, maybe.
well, i love the smell of sourdough bread in the morning
When I graduated from university, my dad had just died, my mom had cancer, and there was no employment for a year. I made a lot of pies and got really good at making crusts. Yep, it was always great when I brought in a real pie, homemade.
I'm so sorry for your loss.
What a wonderful way to keep your wife's memory alive.