I have a pretty large collection of art— I picked up this recently— I like the energy and the expression of the piece— Batman is all for doing this, but his face tells me he’s like me making bread— I can do it but I’m having some struggles with it.
I am a pretty decent cook; I make some great scrambled eggs—Jacques Pepin would be proud that I know how to get air into them and there is never any brown. I can even time bacon and toast to go with it.
I also have a few dishes I’m known for— people ask me all the time to make them my world famous Chili— which is served (hold onto your hats cowboys) over white rice. You need that to absorb some of the heat.
I make a dish I call Chicken Goop Malange — it’s got a creamy base with mushrooms and loads of those amazing French’s Onion Crisps.
I also have a cream cheese chicken dish I make that is often requested by friends and family, and I have really learned how to grille a steak to a perfect medium rare (any higher and you’ve killed the cow twice).
Cooking- always liked it— you can taste and tweak as you go. Baking?
Much harder.
Baking involves science. Baking involves making sure not only are the ingredients perfectly measured but they are at proper temperatures. A slight mistep and the whole thing is ruined. And I’m not talking about making a cake out of a box— I can throw eggs and oil into a mix and bake it— I’m talking real baking.
During the pandemic I decided (since I had no work) to try and duplicate my great aunt and grandmother’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe— hard to explain— every year when they lived in Portland Oregon I would anxiously wait for that box at Christmas time that would be loaded with these cookie gems. They were slightly soft and slightly poofy but they still had a crunch. They were sweetly chocolate but they had a strong hint of salt in them. I can’t explain it— I can explain as I grew to a young man in my early twenties I would share these cookies with friends and to a person they would declare they were the best chocloate chip cookie they ever had.
I spent two solid weeks making batch after batch and I’m not kidding when I say I had notebooks with Dr Frankenstein level notes and diagrams of each batch— then I would taste them and find a flaw. I think I went though 30 batches and then I hit it. I hit it right on the money. I wrote the recipe down added it to our family card file and now Veronica makes them each year and somehow they’re even better than my family’s (sorry grandma and auntie).
Then I decided to try bread. I love fresh bread. Love it. It might be my favorite thing.
I did 4-5 batches and each one was worse than the last— I wasn’t making bread I was making bricks. I would use them to try and knock the squirrels off the bird feeder. I took a couple to the gun range and used them for target practice.
That was then— this is now.
For my birthday this year, or I guess technically last year (Dec 27), Veronica got me a Cuisinart Bread Machine— along with bread flour and yeast— and I whipped up a loaf that was pretty damn close to being good— although I still felt it was a little dense.
I made a second loaf a few days later— Veronica liked it— I thought while it was indeed fluffier it was a little bland— despite upping the Kosher salt in the recipe. I spent a few hours onlline looking for recipes that I thought might work and I found one— as soon as we finish off this loaf I have on the counter I’ll jump into the next one.
It’s getting there, but the getting there is half the fun.