Sunday, May 23, 2010

Makin' biscuits

Last week, a group of us went to Gina's belated birthday party, which was a cooking class in which the fine folks at A Southern Season taught us to make two types of biscuits. Under their tutelage, we split into groups and worked our dough and put our biscuits into their ovens.

This was an entirely new experience for me.

I don't bake. Never have. I love fresh-baked breads and pies and cakes and biscuits and so on, but if I'm going to cook it, I want a flame involved. Put me in front of a grill or a burner, and I'm happy. The oven, though, has always seemed so distant and the baking process so scientific and so devoid of art that I've chosen to stick with my flames.

Boy, was I wrong about baking.

Though each of us got to enjoy pre-measured ingredients and to share the work, I quite enjoyed the process. I also learned something interesting: no two sets of biscuits tasted the same. We all started with the same ingredients. We were all following the same two recipes. We had teachers who were suggesting the same techniques. Despite all those similarities, the biscuits had very distinct flavors.

I guess there's a lot more art involved than I had realized. I'm now having to reconsider baking.

2 comments:

Cynthia Hyde Abbott said...

I believe baking is an art in itself. I love to bake, and do so quite often. Today I baked a 7 layer yellow cake with fudge icing. This was my first attemp at this recipe, and according to everyone who had a slice (it's so moist and chocolaty, I love it). I will be adding it to my list of regular cakes along with Coconut, Red Velvet, Carrot and
Sour Cream Pound cake. I don't know why but baking makes me feel like I've accomlpished a feat of somekind. Though you do have to be extra careful to get the dry, and wet ingredients precise, it's almost always worth it. I encourage you to try baking a cake or some type of bread (pumpkin is my favorite), you'll discover that it's quite rewarding.

Mark said...

I may well try it.

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