Culminating this chapter of my culinary diary is a collection of not one, but three bakery projects that elevated my repertoire in a colorful fashion. And they all have one thing in common: they’re very sweet! I’ll admit that I fostered a sweet tooth way back when, and among the first of culinary projects that I wanted to accomplish was a plethora of bakery treasures that were bad for you. That’s not to say I didn’t care about my health, which I certainly did, but in my mind every homemade dish is better, by default, than whatever you’ll buy in the freezer section or restaurant. Creative control is the key aspect of baking that makes it truly unique, for one baker might choose four teaspoons whilst I might choose three. The flavors will be different and attributable to the bakers who composed them. I find this fact about culinary art to be fascinating – that’s why it’s considered art. The first of my baking projects started with an enigmatic organism called yeast. For those of you who don’t know (which is no one), yeast is a fungus that allows bread to rise. But it’s much more than that. Yeast develops sugars, acids, and alcohols as byproducts as it ferments, providing layers of flavor to breads and bread-like pastries. Such was the case on July 22, 2016, when I conjured the inspiration to make doughnuts at one o’clock in the morning. The dense and sweet dough featured a variety of ingredients that I no longer consume: eggs, butter, flour, milk, sugar, salt, and yeast. A very dense and milky dough, it was the perfect base for beautifully bready doughnuts to be composed on the morning of July 23. The reason I prepared the dough the night prior was so that it could ferment overnight in the fridge. This is where some of the signature layers of flavor come from – fermentation. The next morning, maybe at 11am, I took to a refreshing start and prepared grits and toast for a light breakfast. Yes, I was finally starting to attach myself to Southern traditions (though, is Kentucky really that Northern? Depends on who you ask.). Afterwards, the doughnut dough was removed from the fridge to warm up for about one and a half hours. At this point, the dough inflated significantly, so I had to deflate and form doughnut holes. Again, these had to rise a few more hours so that they could get very large and puffy. This all seems smooth and easy, right? It is. What’s more a pain in the ass is the frying process. If you didn’t know, most commercial doughnuts are fried in cheap, disgusting oil (that’s why I never get them anywhere). To imitate the deep-frying process, I filled a pot up with shortening in place of canola or vegetable oil (though, depending on the brand of shortening you choose, it’s not much better), and then dropped the donut holes in one at a time, oh so delicately. They fry fast, so keep an eye out! A good rule of thumb is that you know the doughnuts are done once the crust turns a lovely golden brown. The finished (and cooled) doughnuts featured a nutmeg-spiced glaze, which got everywhere might I add. Still, this was such a fun baking project that I might never do again (because oil is a mess). With such fun aspirations, and quite the influx of free time since my life was very boring in July of 2016, I felt it appropriate to try some other neat baking endeavors. After all, baking is easy and accessible in this day – almost anything you could possibly want is within arm’s reach (well, maybe driving distance). Realizing this, I went on a baking spree the next couple days! On July 26, 2016, before making the tomato paninis, I prepared raspberry hand pies with leftover raspberries. This is an interesting story, which started with pie crust. Pie crust can go a variety of ways, but either way you choose is simple, contrary to popular belief. Take cold butter cubes and use your fingers to meld them into your flour mixture. What you’ll end up with is a tough, flaky dough that you can push together into a pie plate to form your dough… except we didn’t do that here. Our raspberry filling was comprised of raspberries, corn starch (which kept the raspberries from oozing everywhere), freshly grated orange zest, cinnamon, vanilla extract (my homemade extract, which you can read about here), and maple syrup. Dividing the pie dough into circles using a cup, I ended with sixteen circles (that’s eight pies). Placing a few raspberries in the center of each, I sandwiched the filling and used a fork to knit the signature edges. Finally, I washed the pies with egg wash and baked them until delicious. A decorative orange glaze finished these jewels off, and the rest of my day was satisfactory knowing that I’d crafted an elegant pastry project. Before I got burnt out from successive baking projects, I devised a plan to shift my cooking focus to Mediterranean cuisine. This is where I naturally began my culinary diary – organizing my cooking endeavors into batches that had a specific theme, so as to diversify and structure my cooking. Doing this meant that I’d always have a reliable cooking schedule and a more manageable budget (since I wanted my dishes to exhibit similar themes throughout each “batch,” as I called them). Up until this point, my cooking was hardly structured. However, especially following this bakery overload, I knew that my cooking wouldn’t cease anytime soon. Here I am, almost two years later, telling you this story twenty-five chapters ahead of time. Yeah, there’s a lot to get through, but I can’t wait to share my whole story with you over the next couple years. The things I’ve learned from food have influenced my everyday life, as I’m sure you have seen already. Cheers to change! To close out this chapter of my culinary diary, enjoy a blurry photo of my final unplanned bakery project: a perfectly baked and unhealthy pecan pie – signature of American cuisine:
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