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I baked a pie every day for a year

theguardian.com

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Re: I baked a pie every day for a year

#131

Post by dessimus »

malfist wrote: post #99
vrosas wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When everyone got into baking early covid I couldn’t understand why no one was baking anything, like, good. No pizza or pie or cake or muffins or banana bread or even a damn focaccia. The world collectively just decided the end-all be-all of baking was… sourdough.

Sourdough is fantastic, I have two loaves finishing their overnight chill in my fridge right now, will bake them after dinner. I was baking sourdough since before the pandemic, and will continue baking in the future. It's a bit of work, but it's not too much work and the results are pretty damn fantastic. Focaccia though, if I baked that regularly I'd have to go back on a GLP-1. Focaccia taught me to read the seals o…

>Focaccia taught me to read the seals on olive oil in the supermarket and actually pick the right one for the break.

Come on, you can't just drop that morsel without telling us what we should be looking for in the right olive oil for focaccia.

Re: I baked a pie every day for a year

#133

Post by esperent »

raddan wrote: post #125
sosodev wrote: post #14

I challenge each and every one of you to make a pie by the end of the month. I made one, for the first time in my life, last week. It brought me tremendous joy not only to make it, but to have something nice to share with friends.

In case you did not actually nail perfect, flaky crust the first time, that's a fun parameter to try to optimize. I finally got it at some point, and when I did, I realized that all those old cookbooks that said things like "use little water" and "keep the dough cold"---all the tricks where I thought "that has to be a myth"---turned out to be essential. The Joy of Cooking is full of old wisdom like this that has take…

The "trick" to baking all kinds of things well for the first time is to follow the recipe fanatically. It says high protein flour? Use that, not all purpose flour. It says 500g caster sugar? Don't think that's going to be too sweet and add 400g, the sugar is where the texture comes from (and there's plenty of less sweet recipes to choose instead). It says make sure the dough is chilled? Chill the damn dough!

Once you've baked it perfectly to the exact recipe a few times, then you can start adapting.

Of course, there will come a point in your skill level where you will have the intuition to adapt recipes that you've never cooked before. But many people assume they can do that immediately, fail, then assume they can't cook and give up.

I will say though that the other biggest area where people fail is having a janky oven that can't maintain a stable temperature, or where you set it to 200C but it only reaches 160C. So an oven thermometer is a useful tool to buy.

Re: I baked a pie every day for a year

#134

Post by dmd »

malfist wrote: post #99
vrosas wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When everyone got into baking early covid I couldn’t understand why no one was baking anything, like, good. No pizza or pie or cake or muffins or banana bread or even a damn focaccia. The world collectively just decided the end-all be-all of baking was… sourdough.

Sourdough is fantastic, I have two loaves finishing their overnight chill in my fridge right now, will bake them after dinner. I was baking sourdough since before the pandemic, and will continue baking in the future. It's a bit of work, but it's not too much work and the results are pretty damn fantastic. Focaccia though, if I baked that regularly I'd have to go back on a GLP-1. Focaccia taught me to read the seals o…

I can't figure out what "seals" or "break" mean in this sentence. What am I missing here?

Re: I baked a pie every day for a year

#135

Post by esperent »

Waterluvian wrote: post #25
sosodev wrote: post #14

I challenge each and every one of you to make a pie by the end of the month. I made one, for the first time in my life, last week. It brought me tremendous joy not only to make it, but to have something nice to share with friends.

I did this recently, and you know what I really loved about it? It's a great entry-level baking activity where the upside is that you have a pie (something you can gift or just eat!) and the downside is that you have a sort of cobbler. You really can't !@#$ up a pie. Omelette is another good one. At worse you have scrambled eggs. I mean, yes, at worse you burn your neighbourhood down and your dog runs away. But in te…

> You really can't !@#$ up a pie

I mean, it's hard to end up with something completely inedible but you absolutely can mess it up. Soggy wet pastry at the bottom is the biggest problem but there's plenty of advice around about how to avoid that.

Re: I baked a pie every day for a year

#137

Post by muststopmyths »

dmd wrote: post #134
malfist wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sourdough is fantastic, I have two loaves finishing their overnight chill in my fridge right now, will bake them after dinner. I was baking sourdough since before the pandemic, and will continue baking in the future. It's a bit of work, but it's not too much work and the results are pretty damn fantastic. Focaccia though, if I baked that regularly I'd have to go back on a GLP-1. Focaccia taught me to read the seals o…

I can't figure out what "seals" or "break" mean in this sentence. What am I missing here?

they possibly meant nutrition label and bread

Re: I baked a pie every day for a year

#138

Post by underlipton »

gnatman wrote: post #6

I’m of the belief that doing just about anything every single day for a year will change your life! A key for me has been to “lower the bar” so that I can keep the promise to myself and maintain momentum through days of low energy or enthusiasm, e.g. playing the guitar for 1 minute, or writing 1 sentence.

I took a 20-minute walk every day for a year. I don't know that it changed my life, but I think it kept me healthier than I otherwise would have been at the height of the pandemic, and it also gave me a point of pride in saying that I had the resolve and discipline to do something every day for a full year, come what may (did?).

It taught me the importance of ritual, and it also taught me how... incredibly imperceptive a lot of people are. (I was living with a family member at the time, who was constantly asking me if I was "getting out of the house" regularly. Yes. Every day. For a month, and then 3 months, and then half-a-year, and then almost a full year, and then more than a year. On that note, it's essential to not let others' expectations cloud your appreciation for what you're doing. Somehow, it had wormed its way into my subconscious rationale that part of the reason that I was taking my walks was to live up to their expectations. When it became clear that they didn't really care - at least not enough to notice - that kind of deflated things a bit.)

Re: I baked a pie every day for a year

#139

Post by fuzztester »

fsagx wrote: post #74
ant6n wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A friend of mine tries to bake a spherical pie for pi day (March 14) each year, with varying approaches (and levels of success). Could also do it on pi approximation day (July 22), then one doesn't have to be so exact about it.

I didn't get it, so I looked it up. 22/7 ~= 3.14

355 / 113

( = 3.1415929204 )

is one approximation I have read about, attributed by some, to ancient or medieval Indian or Chinese mathematicians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximations_of_pi

Re: I baked a pie every day for a year

#140

Post by malfist »

dmd wrote: post #134
malfist wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sourdough is fantastic, I have two loaves finishing their overnight chill in my fridge right now, will bake them after dinner. I was baking sourdough since before the pandemic, and will continue baking in the future. It's a bit of work, but it's not too much work and the results are pretty damn fantastic. Focaccia though, if I baked that regularly I'd have to go back on a GLP-1. Focaccia taught me to read the seals o…

I can't figure out what "seals" or "break" mean in this sentence. What am I missing here?

Seals as in the certifications on the bottle.

Break is an autowrong. Should be bread.

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