Comment by vrosas
13 hours ago
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 on olive oil in the supermarket and actually pick the right one for the break.
A fringe benefit is the discard. We refresh ours every day 10g/10g/10g so it adds up slowly but steadily. Two great uses are waffles and pizza crust.
Waffles: https://www.seriouseats.com/bread-baking-sourdough-waffles-r...
Pizza crust: https://www.sourdoughhome.com/sourdough-pizza-made-with-disc...
>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.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YCt2txu11d4
Great video that talks about selecting the olive oil for your use case and which seals aren't just self granted. I personally have been using colavita. Its fantastic.
I hate it but it's taught me that freshness actually matters. I bought some for focaccia and it was amazing. Saved it in the pantry for special occasions. Went back six months later and it had zero flavor. Just tasted like generic oil. Flat.
It ruined me.
Also if you're an engineer and like cooking, check out that guy's YouTube channel, He's very analytical in explaining cooking
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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.
they possibly meant nutrition label and bread
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Wait, did I write this? Same, same, same.
Just got a loaf out of the oven. The smell, the crust, the whole feel of something very much tangible and enjoyable . I'm very much considering opening a small bakery.
Sourdough is the bomb though. I agree about the lack of variety, but in its defense, sourdough starter can be used for a variety of other baked goods.
Plus bread itself is used in other recipes, like sandwiches or toasts or for mopping up sauced dishes.
Or even brew beers and meads.
It wasn't for no reason at all though. There were concerns about availability of yeast, which isn't used in sourdough. (Valid concerns or not, I have no idea.)
I do find it kind of wild how intimidating most people I know find baking. Get a food scale and follow the directions and you're good to go and will have something respectable and delicious. As with anything, you can dive deep and go extreme with it. But baking delicious food is not rocket science.
It is fun but it's also not universal. While every house and apartment I've lived in in the USA had an oven, the default in Japan is no oven. 1 to 3 burners, and possibly a broiler is the norm.
If you want an oven you get microwave/oven combo.
Might be similar in Korea? China? Taiwan? India?
Funny you'd say that. Other people say cooking is art, while baking is a science. No room for errors.
Cooking is art, baking is a very easy science (weight things and check the temperature), pastry is another thing. That requires talent, experience and a lucky star.
if there was no room for "errors", how is it possible that there are tens of thousands of different bread and cookie recipes and stuff like that?
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Baking bread is fun because its not science. It had guidelines but thats it
For one thing, yeast was in short supply, so if you wanted to bake regularly, sourdough was a good option if you could keep it going.
Well, as a less-advanced baker, I get the most pleasure from baking bread.
Plus, I can eat it without getting fat.
I wish I eat bread without getting fat.
if it makes you feel better, we got into baking during covid and never baked sourdough once. we made pizza, cake, muffins, banana bread, regular bread, cornbread, etc. we just didn't post about it online ...
Not trying to gain weight when being stuck inside, maybe.
Maybe because the large time investment and trial+error in making good dough provided something to focus on when stuck inside.
I baked a Napoleon cake. It was amazing, took 11 eggs and it was the one and only.
IMO it's because it's more challenging. I've baked everything you've listed and apart from pizza (which is also bread) it's all trivial to do. You just follow a recipe.
Bread is a totally different thing. Only four ingredients: a ground up grass seed, a mineral, a single celled fungus that lives in the dough, and water. The results range from complete disaster to the best thing you've ever eaten. It all depends on your technique.
That's why it has captivated so many and in particular men, as you can get really deep and geeky. There's only so far you can go with banana bread.
> The world collectively just decided the end-all be-all of baking was… sourdough.
I can't speak for the world, but:
1. Good bread is really hard to come by in the United States. Unless you're going to a bakery twice a week[1], or your local grocery has a contract with one [2]... Your idea of 'bread' is probably mushy garbage that I would describe as more similar to 'cake'.
2. Sourdough is relatively easy to make. Flour, salt, water, starter, time[3].
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[1] Going anywhere to buy one item that is eaten or goes bad in three days is a big ask... Which is why this isn't a great option.
[2] The overwhelming majority don't, and when they do, they want $7 a loaf.
[3] Which a lot of people had plenty of.
Good bread is everywhere in major cities in the US. There are bakery sections at grocery stores and there are many local bakeries.
> There are bakery sections at grocery stores
There are, and most of them don't have good bread. (Baguettes are about the only good bread that you can reliably expect to find in them. Sometimes they have San Francisco-style sourdough, which in my experience, tastes like someone dumped a shot of lemon vinegar into it. Just because a bread uses sourdough starter doesn't mean it needs to taste sour. I feel much the same way about hops and beer.)
Regularly visiting the bakery is, for reasons I've mentioned, a lot of friction for one purchase.
My closest one carries... Weird specialty hipster breads (because it is more focused on tarts and pastries and sweets - bread is just an afterthought for it).
The one I'd go to, if my closest grocery weren't stocking them is way out of my way. I would not be making that trip twice a week.
well, i love the smell of sourdough bread in the morning