Join me in my journey as I take baking classes, research cookbooks and baking blogs, visit local bakeries and restaurants, and then try my hand at home as an amateur baker.
Ordered my little baguette pan on-line at cooking.com, and I've used it twice already. It holds the dough during both proofing and baking. (After shaping the dough into a baguette, gently place it on the pan, cover it loosely with plastic wrap, and let it proof. Then when ready to bake, simply pop the pan in the oven.) You can buy pans that hold 2, 3 or 4 baguettes. It works beautifully.
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.
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