Baking Daze in LA: Claire Daniels and Dean Daniels Mother's Day 2010

Showing posts with label Claire Daniels and Dean Daniels Mother's Day 2010. Show all posts

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Definitely a Happy Mother's Day!

A wonderful Mother's Day spent with my son and daughter was topped off with the perfect gifts. Claire got me a lovely pie dish from Williams Sonoma--a red one, of course--and Dean, the latest Williams Sonoma Baking Book for the Home Baker. You'll be seeing the results of both in future blogs. Thanks Dean and Claire--I love you!

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

BIT BY THE BAKING BUG

Something happened to me after taking an unexpected early retirement from teaching English in Los Angeles. I had planned to spend every precious minute reading, writing short stories, and working on a rewrite of a novel. The last place I expected to find myself--literally and figuratively--was in the kitchen; yet there I was, flipping through a book called The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart and getting excited at the thought of attempting to bake pain a l'ancienne, a rustic French bread made through a process of slow fermentation. Well bake it, I did--and it actually turned out pretty darn good to my surprise!

Now what's followed has been a worldwind of baking mania as I've spent evenings reading--not Virginia Woolf or Shakespeare--but cookbooks (on baking of course!) or searching the web for local baking classes and baking blogs.

I've attended lectures (Peter Reinhart's in fact!), completed the Professional Baking I class at The New School of Cooking in Culver City and studied specialty cake design at the School of Confectionary Art at Cake Crumbs in Encino, CA.

And finally, I decided to combine my two loves, writing and baking, so I can share my Baking Daze in LA, past, present, and to come.