Goldman - Duff bakes: think and bake like a pro at home

DUFF BAKES

TO CHEF CINDY WOLF,
WHO CHANGED MY LIFE BY MAKING ME
BAKE CORNBREAD AND BISCUITS
FOR TWO YEARS STRAIGHT

CONTENTS

O riginally I wanted to call this book Bake Awesome. Its one of the things I write when I sign an autograph. I know that sounds really lame, but hear me out. Most people I meet tell me how they love to cook and they love watching me bake, but they just cant do it. They cant bake. Too much measuring, too much scienceit seems like this impenetrable fortress of knowledge that one can only gain access to by laying culinary siege to it for many, many years, or by being a grandmother.

I try to explain to people that baking is the kind of thing that you can be successful at the first time you try it and spend the rest of your life learning about. Baking is science, yes. Baking is math, physics, chemistry, and measuring. But baking is also feeling, smelling, loving, and intuition. Baking is something you dance with. Its a slow dance, though, not a mosh pit. Its a measured pace of placing every foot and every hand in just the right spot at just the right time and moving with, not at, your partner. You feel when the cake is done. You smell when the cookies are perfect. You listen to the bread when it crackles as it cools and you know that crust is going to be delicious.

Baking is just like playing music. Ive always found a striking relation between playing music and baking in that they both require harmony to have quality. Music is constructed in such a way that certain notes sound good coming before or after other notes. Baking observes these same rules. There are steps you take that come before other steps to make sure the muffin is good. What I want everyone to understand is that baking isnt this cold, rigid science that you need a PhD for; its a craft like any other that you discover for yourself every time you do it. Its the perpetual excitement at seeing what you bake when it comes out of the oven. It never ceases to be magic, and it only becomes more fascinating the more you do it.

Sara and I want to give people our view of baking as professional bakers, but we want to do it in a language that everyone can understand. We want to explain the shorthand and make it accessible. And we really, really want you to bake.

W ell, shucks, Duff, thank you for that lovely intro to my intro. So who am I? Im simply a young lady who likes to create things that make people smile, and I happen to have a knack for baking. People love to ask me if I always wanted to bake, if I sought a career in it, if I studied and went to school to learn and perfect my baking. The answer is actually no, not at all.

Ive always loved baking as a hobby. My mom taught me how to make pie crust around the age of six or so, and quick breads and cookies not long after that, and later the hobby really blossomed into an after-school activity to pass the time with my best friend when we didnt want to go to swim team practice that day. I went on to get a degree in health education (ironic, I know), and in college I was lucky enough to have friends around me who relished cooking and baking as much as I did, so the skill set, the confidence, and the hands-on experience grew in the space of my own kitchen as the years went by.

My first professional job baking in a kitchen was a happy accident. I happened to find a baking assistant position that I considered a temporary gig until I could find something more in line with my degree. And wouldnt you know, I fell in love with it. The feeling of the dough stuck to my fingers, the sound of the mixer whirring to combine a seemingly random assembly of ingredients into the most decadent brownie batter, and the smells of fresh baked goodsoh, the smells!

Baking lets my creative side flourisha side of myself that six years ago I had little idea even existed. Now I have the coolest damn job! Duff says, Hey, Sara, what if we make this pie that has this and that in it? Can you do that? and I get to respond with I have no idea! Lets try it, plus we can add this! This is what I do nowI experiment, I create, I develop my skills and experience new things daily, and the best part about it is that Im just getting started. I love bakingits a wonderful thingand I hope this book helps you to feel that way, too.

In baking, as in life, always ask why? Its important for two reasons: The first is that when you know why, you gain a deeper understanding of the thing youre attempting to learn. The second is that when you ask someone why? and they dont know, and you go off and find the answer yourself, its a spectacular way to learn lots of other stuff in the process.

I always ask why? when I bake (and in general), and not just because I have a degree in philosophy. I enjoy knowing why because it helps me create something better than I would have if I didnt know. Say the recipe says, Dont overmix. Okay, why? Well, overmixing creates stronger protein strands, which make a chewier texture, and I like my cake tender, not hard like a bagel. There, you just learned a why. When I say, Scrape down the sides of the bowl, ask me why? Funny you should askIll tell you. When youre mixing a batter, ingredients will often get stuck to the sides of the bowl. What if that includes all the salt in a recipe? Well, then most of your cookies will be real flat-tasting, while one cookie will be salty, which will of course be the cookie I sell to a food blogger, who will then tell the entire world that I bake salty cookies.

Our philosophy at Charm City Cakes is relatively simple: Make awesome stuff, be nice to people and each other, and have fun while we do it. Its so glaringly obvious when someone enjoys what they do. You can see it. You see it in the details. You see it in the (almost) (wink, wink) flawless execution of a project. We laugh a lot. We enjoy our customers and joke around with them. We have funny pictures of cats all over the bakery. But we make incredible cakes. Ive worked in a lot of kitchens, and I can tell you that when theres no joy in a kitchen, it can be very difficult to achieve excellence. But in a kitchen like mine, where laughter and silliness are the rule, its so much easier to get the best work done.

It should be the same in your kitchen. It should be a place of joy, not dread. Bake fearlessly. Bake knowing that nothing, and I mean nothing, makes a kid happier than a fresh-baked cookie, and nothing can make you happier than knowing you made a kid happy. We do what we do at Charm City Cakes because of the look on our customers faces when they see their cake for the first time... and then again when they taste it. Having fun and caring deeply about what youre doing are not mutually exclusive concepts. In some professions, such as being a surgeon, I can imagine that its very important to be serious and focused. Were bakers, though, and a certain amount of frivolity is not only tolerated, but expected.