A friend was a professional chef who always said that cooking was about taste, but baking was about measurement. I always smiled and deferred to my friend’s informed opinion. However, I also continued to be somewhat loose in my measurements of the Christmas fruitcakes and the Easter poppyseed bread.
I felt guilty whenever he swallowed a bite and credited me with good baking skills. A teaspoon? Well, maybe two.
What was worse was the family history. I am responsible for the fruitcake, but the Hungarian poppyseed bread was all my grandmother’s. At one time or the other, every member of my father’s generation asked, “Mama, what’s in the poppyseed bread?” She would cryptically reply, ” Oh, a bit of this and a pinch of that, poppyseed, sweet bread dough, and some other things.” So after years of experimenting to rebuild the recipe, I finally had it nailed, only to reply to inquiries that it was a pinch of that, a handful of raisins, and some other stuff. Ask me how many cups of this, or teaspoons of that, and I could refer you to my notes that detailed it all. Except tht I have this urge to play with things.
So I felt guilty that my friend, the professional chef, believed that I had mastered measurement and good baking skills. I had, in fact, mastered the school of baking that Anna Carreras (nee Horvath) had originated in her father’s rooming house in New York City.
If it was good enough for Granddad. It’s good enough for me.
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I, too, am more of a cook than a baker for this very reason. I left chemistry behind me in high school.
Chemistry…Chemistry…we don’t need no stinkin’ chemistry!!!