for my archives

Nigella's words:

Cooks like ransacking the fridge and enthusiastically tossing random ingredients into a pan or a stockpot to make a meal; bakers come into their own only with dessert.

I considered myself to belong to the former group. This was an accident of birth: neither my mother nor either of my grandmothers was a baker (male ancestors didn't figure into this equation at all), and without a cozy nursery initiation into the rites of baking, it can seem a forbidding, arcane art.

I am here to say the truth is altogether different. Baking is a cinch. More, it is a joy. You need know nothing to be proficient. Proficiency engenders confidence. And confidence breeds an attachment that can become habitual.

reposted from m.dash