Baking a cake is culinary magic. Nowhere else in cooking is the transformation of few simple ingredients so profound and so appreciated.
Baking has the reputation of being more difficult than cooking – the specter of chemistry frightens some people.
Baking is different from cooking.
A great cook may create dishes intuitively, almost casually, working with what’s in the larder or refrigerator, tasting and correcting the work in progress.
A great baker is attentive to technique, details and timing. Unable to taste, correct and create along the way, the baker is a stickler for measurements, insistent on proper pan sizes, and fussy about the temperature of everything from the oven to the butter. Because the same ingredients combined in different order, mixed differently, or even used at different temperatures results in quite different cakes (or failures), good bakers are dedicated to small things that produce beautiful cakes that taste heavenly.
Peering through the shop windows to look at the confectionary did more than making me hungry. I'm so eager to learn the basics of baking than to follow recipes blindly. Hope the remaining break is sufficentt to let me make some progress :)
