The Rise of a would be Baker.
There is a giant chasm between wanting to do something new, and actually doing it. After becoming interested in baking, largely because of my fondness of the show "The Great British Bake Off", I began to understand what was needed to become an accomplished amateur baker.
We are not a household which regularly bakes from scratch. My wife is a really good cook. She makes a great apple pie, the best Christmas sugar cookies I have ever had, and every year her chocolate chip cookies for the kid's first day of school are a much welcome tradition. Once in a while I would throw together a batch of German walnut rock cookies at Christmas, a tradition from my side of the family. I was known more as a grill guy, churning out burgers, brats and steaks while basking in the desert sun, but my skills in the kitchen were pretty shaky. So as I began to evaluate the idea of serious home baking, I did a little inventory of our equipment.
As it turns out, we were pretty poorly equipped. We had a few good cookie sheets, a couple of old, not great cake pans, a couple of just okay pie pans, one bread tin, and a pretty dazzling array of mixing bowls which were the remnants of various sets of mixing bowls that managed to survive the rigors of 3 active sons over the past 20 years. We had a shit load of measuring spoons, again a mixed batch from multiple sets. Add to the mix a few measuring cups, a variety of mixing spoons and other small utensils, and a rolling pin I know we have somewhere but have yet to find.
Pretty dismal. Even more dismal than knowing what I had to work with was the knowledge that I didn't really know what I needed. In baking, there is a HUGE inventory of equipment. I had almost nothing, and, as I would eventually learn, I had even less stuff than I knew at the time. I was starting basically from scratch, and needed to figure out what I wanted to bake and then get the stuff I needed to bake that stuff. As discouraging as all this sounds, there was a bright spot in our kitchen inventory, something that would make all of the difference as I delved into baking. In my junkyard of baking and cooking equipment, I had a muscle car, a turbo charged monster ready to be unleashed on the world of baking. I had a brand new, Empire Red, 6 Quart, Professional Series, Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer.
Well, actually, to tell the truth, the mixer belonged to my wife. From the time we moved to Arizona 20 years ago, when my wife bravely became a stay at home mom, she had wanted a good mixer. We have had a number of hand mixers, all of which eventually stop working, but never a really good mixer. Finally, after 19 years, I bought her the Kitchen Aid mixer as a Mother's Day gift from me and the Boys. She loved it, and was looking forward to using it for a myriad of culinary adventures. Then, fate stepped in and rendered the Kitchen Aid mixer powerless, almost unnecessary. My wife got a job.
She had always planned to get a job outside the home after the boys were grown, probably after the twins graduated from high school. However, in the Spring of 2017, she went to a Jobs Fair. She wanted to test the waters and see what was out there. Her concern was that no one would want to hire a woman who had been out of the work force for nearly 20 years. She was wrong. Very wrong. She applied online to several of the companies she had contacted at the Fair, and within 3 days she had multiple offers. On the 3rd day she accepted an offer from a Fortune 500 company to work at their new Corporate HQ in the banking division. While it was earlier than she had planned, the offer and benefits were too good to pass.
So the mixer sat on the counter, unused and kind of in the way, as my wife conquered the corporate world. It would take me getting into baking for the power of the mixer to finally be unleashed. I guess I feel a little bad about it. After all, this was supposed to be a gift for her, not me. I kind of felt like Homer Simpson, when he bought Marge a bowling ball for her birthday, even though she doesn't bowl. Homer even had his name etched on the ball. The mixer is not labeled with my name, so I guess I am not too much of an asshole. I still feel like I owe her a really good gift. Maybe she would enjoy a new set of Le Creuset bakeware?
Armed with a Kitchen Aid mixer, some crappy pans, and a deep sense of purpose, I was ready to get busy becoming the next great baker. I decided on a recipe, one from Mary Berry's Baking Bible (also a gift for my wife, but I am done apologizing), an English Walnut Cake. All I needed were some Walnuts, as we had most of the other ingredients. Then another little challenge arose in my pursuit of British baking glory: the fucking Metric System.
On my next post, the Dough Dad struggles to remember 5th Grade Math class and finally bakes a cake.
We are not a household which regularly bakes from scratch. My wife is a really good cook. She makes a great apple pie, the best Christmas sugar cookies I have ever had, and every year her chocolate chip cookies for the kid's first day of school are a much welcome tradition. Once in a while I would throw together a batch of German walnut rock cookies at Christmas, a tradition from my side of the family. I was known more as a grill guy, churning out burgers, brats and steaks while basking in the desert sun, but my skills in the kitchen were pretty shaky. So as I began to evaluate the idea of serious home baking, I did a little inventory of our equipment.
As it turns out, we were pretty poorly equipped. We had a few good cookie sheets, a couple of old, not great cake pans, a couple of just okay pie pans, one bread tin, and a pretty dazzling array of mixing bowls which were the remnants of various sets of mixing bowls that managed to survive the rigors of 3 active sons over the past 20 years. We had a shit load of measuring spoons, again a mixed batch from multiple sets. Add to the mix a few measuring cups, a variety of mixing spoons and other small utensils, and a rolling pin I know we have somewhere but have yet to find.
Pretty dismal. Even more dismal than knowing what I had to work with was the knowledge that I didn't really know what I needed. In baking, there is a HUGE inventory of equipment. I had almost nothing, and, as I would eventually learn, I had even less stuff than I knew at the time. I was starting basically from scratch, and needed to figure out what I wanted to bake and then get the stuff I needed to bake that stuff. As discouraging as all this sounds, there was a bright spot in our kitchen inventory, something that would make all of the difference as I delved into baking. In my junkyard of baking and cooking equipment, I had a muscle car, a turbo charged monster ready to be unleashed on the world of baking. I had a brand new, Empire Red, 6 Quart, Professional Series, Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer.
Well, actually, to tell the truth, the mixer belonged to my wife. From the time we moved to Arizona 20 years ago, when my wife bravely became a stay at home mom, she had wanted a good mixer. We have had a number of hand mixers, all of which eventually stop working, but never a really good mixer. Finally, after 19 years, I bought her the Kitchen Aid mixer as a Mother's Day gift from me and the Boys. She loved it, and was looking forward to using it for a myriad of culinary adventures. Then, fate stepped in and rendered the Kitchen Aid mixer powerless, almost unnecessary. My wife got a job.
She had always planned to get a job outside the home after the boys were grown, probably after the twins graduated from high school. However, in the Spring of 2017, she went to a Jobs Fair. She wanted to test the waters and see what was out there. Her concern was that no one would want to hire a woman who had been out of the work force for nearly 20 years. She was wrong. Very wrong. She applied online to several of the companies she had contacted at the Fair, and within 3 days she had multiple offers. On the 3rd day she accepted an offer from a Fortune 500 company to work at their new Corporate HQ in the banking division. While it was earlier than she had planned, the offer and benefits were too good to pass.
So the mixer sat on the counter, unused and kind of in the way, as my wife conquered the corporate world. It would take me getting into baking for the power of the mixer to finally be unleashed. I guess I feel a little bad about it. After all, this was supposed to be a gift for her, not me. I kind of felt like Homer Simpson, when he bought Marge a bowling ball for her birthday, even though she doesn't bowl. Homer even had his name etched on the ball. The mixer is not labeled with my name, so I guess I am not too much of an asshole. I still feel like I owe her a really good gift. Maybe she would enjoy a new set of Le Creuset bakeware?
Armed with a Kitchen Aid mixer, some crappy pans, and a deep sense of purpose, I was ready to get busy becoming the next great baker. I decided on a recipe, one from Mary Berry's Baking Bible (also a gift for my wife, but I am done apologizing), an English Walnut Cake. All I needed were some Walnuts, as we had most of the other ingredients. Then another little challenge arose in my pursuit of British baking glory: the fucking Metric System.
On my next post, the Dough Dad struggles to remember 5th Grade Math class and finally bakes a cake.
Hello! Well, I actually read the title wrong and after laughing hysterically for 5 minutes I decided to champion on anyway. So happy I did, "desert" dough dad not dessert..lol..you gave a fan! I so enjoyed your journey. You remind me of a dear friend of mine that I worked with..retired now..we were nurses on nightshift and he ate my lunch leaving me a letter as to how it happened...still laughing.
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