Salon.com > Baking

The baker’s lament

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 21:32:00 +0000

I used to be a pastry chef. It didn’t last—doing what you love for money ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, folks!—but it was an intensely gratifying experience. My very first gig was at a vegan restaurant more than an hour by subway away from my apartment, but I thought nothing of hopping on the train after my magazine job finished for the day, arriving at the restaurant, baking until near-dawn, getting an hour of sleep on the ride home, showering, and going back to my magazine job. I did this two or three times a week for months, and despite my cross-eyed fatigue, I loved the process. I loved—and still love—watching the magic of chemistry and labor. Chemistry: the rising of cake, the shortening of crusts; labor, measuring, the mixing, the juggling of pans, the exquisite feeling of slicing a pear just so and swirling the slices atop a tart. People always said to me, “Oh, I couldn’t be a pastry chef—I’d gain so much weight”; the truth is, professionals rarely eat what they create. That’s not where the pleasure is, even for a sweets lover like me. The joy lies in the creation.

Your best recipes for welcoming 2011

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 02:01:00 +0000

Every week, your challenge is to create an eye-opening dish within our capricious themes and parameters. Blog your submission on Open Salon by Monday 10 a.m. EST -- with photos and your story behind the dish -- and we'll republish the winners on Salon on Tuesday. (It takes only 30 seconds to start a blog.) Please note that by participating, you're giving Salon permission to re-post your entry if it's chosen as a winner, and acknowledging that all words and images in your post are your own, unless explicitly stated. And yes, mashed potato sculpture counts as a dish. Emphatically.

This week, we asked for your best dishes to ring in the New Year.

THIS WEEK'S WINNER:

New Year's Hot Pot, a DIY feast by Felicia Lee: If holidays, even raucous, drunken ones, are really supposed to be about togetherness, what could be a more appropriate meal than this, where people gather around a pot of bubbling soup, cooking meats and vegetables in the broth for themselves and their neighbors?

THIS WEEK'S ALTERNATE WINNERS:

Cheddar pecan scones with butternut squash butter

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 00:20:00 +0000

Your family will not let you change. They know you too well, or they think they know you too well -- deeply, through the muscle, to the bone. In their eyes, you lost your chance to turn out differently once your fontanelle fused.

For instance, during one brutal round of Trouble -- a board game in which players gang up on other players, sending their pieces back to the start again and again -- I threw the playing pieces against the wall, stomped on the board, smashed the bubble that held the dice and was thereafter labeled a "sore loser." Never mind that the fateful game of Trouble happened 38 years ago, when I was 5, and since then I've gone on to fail and lose at many other (more important) things with a minimum of ungracious behavior and private stewing, to my family I will forever be a "sore loser."

Shortly into our marriage, my husband added "cheater." It wasn't infidelity he accused me of, it was the kind of cheating related to being a "sore loser," which my family had, of course, already warned him about.