baking: does it come easily to you?

I cook alot and am pretty good at it but have no interest in baking. My daughters would bake dessert every single day if I let them.

everything in VG’s link sounds worth thinking about

also Lee, just out of curiosity - how come you don’t primarily use your oven for baking?

I do use my big oven for things that won't fit in my toaster oven! It gets all of my 9x13 casserole dish, cookie sheet, loaf pan bakes. But when it comes to my 8x8 cake pan, I think that I'm trying to save on gas costs.

An oven thermometer is a great thing to borrow from a friend. I only ever used mine once and was like "yep, that's the right temperature"

interesting!

though tbf i have never encountered a toaster oven that i could bake a cake in.

Think it depends on the toaster oven; in AK sometimes we would run out of propane during a cold snap (you can't pump propane when it's cold) and have to use the toaster oven, and it worked fine for small things.

My cousin and I once took a toaster to a bar and baked a pie in it while listening to the band, which in retrospect must have been really annoying for the bar staff, though we did give them some pie. My cousin's dad had been playing music there for decades, so she got away with stuff like that.

a toaster oven, that is

omg lol that rules!

Haha I love DIY bar pie

My boring oven update: I got the the oven thermometer, and apparently it too my oven an additional 10 minutes to fully preheat!

I’ve noticed lot of sourdough books/websites say to preheat for at least an hour - maybe to avoid problems like that. Feels kinda wasteful tho - thermometer sounds like a good move

Pies are kind of hard, at least more so than muffins or cakes! Probably because the ccrust introduces a whole new variable? Anyway, I tried making a pecan pie last night and it was pretty bad (though I'll see how a night in the fridge affects it), and I have yet to make a decent pie.

premade crusts can make life easier
or cookie crusts like graham cracker
it took me a bit of practice to get my pie crusts to be not shit

a great pie that is easy = atlantic beach pie
kinda like a key lime pie but better
the saltine crust was new for me & really makes the pie imo

https://www.ourstate.com/one-phenomenal-pie/

the only total failure I've made was a pecan pie. all the filling leaked out somehow. i had no pie and was extremely pissed off.

i made cheesecake brownies with raspberries in this weekend, which were good

i made a couple pie crusts recently. i'm getting pretty good at it but it's a challenge when it's hot out. i have been smushing the cold butter cubes with my fingers instead of using the kitchenaid. probably won't do another until fall though. it's hard.

yeah i came to realize that the finger method def works but i haaaaate doing it because my fingers cramp up lol #old

hands seems to help get a better feel for the dough overall, if you can keep it all from getting too warm

such a crapshoot

I use the finger method because it works much better, but sometimes I cut up the butter first so that I have less work to do.

oh yeah i cut it in cubes first

Jeffrey Steingarten has an excellent and entertaining essay. I use his recipe and technique with great results! Will try to find a link.

Pie/shortcrust people: freeze your butter and grate it into the flour.

i’m gonna try that

i have seen this done but i'd be worried the pieces would be too small. may work if it's cold in the kitchen but more surface area per volume = fast melting.

Use the large hole grater (the one you’d use for eg. Cheddar). I’ve had success making the dough for Jamaican patties using this technique and those are usually a summer food.

The pecan pie filling turned out OK, even though I burned the hell out of everything. The crust did not survive, however.

I'm kind of committed to making my own pie crusts for a while because I opened a new pack of shortening when I already had a pack opened.

you gotta use butter

I usually like to use a combo of butter and shortening so that it's flaky without being brittle. But I have to make a pie today and am out of shortening, so I'll make my best attempt at an all-butter crust and see how it goes.

I use the recipe that Lily posted!

i read the thread title as "banking" and i thought, Yes, yes it does!

but baking, i'm afraid it does not come easily to me.

oh ok. i have tried butter shortening combo and found it didn't help but have gotten very flaky w/just butter. obv opinions vary on this. dorie greenspan recipe has like 1/4 cup shortening and the rest butter (i believe this is the same or adapted from julia child), and so does the king arthur one. but my shortening went bad bc i never use it so i used lard when i did the dorie one. it was ok but both of those fats seem to get softer faster. i am pretty committed to all butter after experimentation but i also really like butter.

1/4 cup shortening and the rest butter is what I ended up using today because that was what I had. It was a bit harder to work with than I'm used to but turned out fine, with a bit more of a shortbread flavor from the butter. I had to guess at the amount of salt because I use salted butter; I took it down to a heaping 1/2 tsp which seems about right.

I have found in the past that my all-butter crusts turned out flaky but a little tough, but I know other people get good results with all butter so it's probably just something about my recipe.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/cb4bf53cf8f6f700f83ae42dd2854637/08bdcad84931388f-ef/s1280x1920/974db38a27c6f4b327edf85285ee145784ccd25b.jpg

My first decent pie (from here)! The blueberry filling is a little one-dimensional so the next time I make it, I'm probably going to add some lemon juice and maybe ginger/cinnamon/cardomom or maybe even add some raspberries.

I tried that pecan pie recipe again and this time it turned out way better. I was low on honey (which I normally use instead of maple syrup) so I subbed in mashed bananas. The consistency was different but still tasty!

glad it turned out!

this is my go-to, neverfail pecan pie

http://desertcandy.blogspot.com/2007/11/pecan-pie.html

That looks great! I notice though that it doesn't mention toasting the pecans. Do they get crispy in the bake? I assume not, and that I should toast them in their own before I put them in the filing.

if you arrange some halves on top for decoration theyll get crispy
no need to toast them though, seriously that is not at all necessary

Maybe it was just the bag that I got this time around, but I didn't like the texture of the pecans when I didn't toast them this time! Kind of mushy, and not very crisp.

you do you :)

if Leee can’t make wildly questionable substitutions he’s not interested afaik

<3 lol

ok i was wondering about this but don't want leee to be offended but since you brought it up: leee why do you substitute so much???

i want it to be fall so i can bake these things. it's just too hot.

lol no worries!

I guess it's a holdover from before I really got into baking and didn't always have pantry staples on hand, as well as (possibly misguided?) notions of using healthier ingredients, as well as seeing how far I can get with (homemade) vegan products. (Homemade because store-bought tends to be more expensive and I can create only as much as I need and not worry about the unused leftover spoiling.)

Nowadays though I'm mainly focused on avoiding sugar and coconut products (he sez while with a mostly full jar of coconut oil in the pantry).

xp one benefit of living in SF is that it's 60 degrees year-round and ergo always baking weather!

Just made a very fluffy banana bread, except I only had two ripe nanas so I subbed in a mango that was sitting around, ryde I don't care because it's really good.

one soft fruit for another sounds uncharacteristically reasonable Leee

i bet it was great