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Mar 6, 2023Liked by Scott Hines

Two thoughts here:

1) I’ve avoided the parchment paper issue lately by switching to the BreadMat from Rosehill Sourdough. It’s reusable and it’s got little handles for putting it in and lifting it out of a screaming hot Dutch oven. https://rosehillsourdough.com/product/the-breadmat/ (I also love Mike’s ebook “Rosehill Sourdough” it’s $20 and explains sourdough better than any book I’ve ever seen. He’s a former engineer at Ooni and he’s also got great videos and whatnot. And his new product is a wood-pulp proofing basket that I like much more than my old linen/rattan ones.)

2) as for the cook/baker dichotomy I think it’s real, but I think we should shift our terms a bit. I think of it as cook/pastry instead. To me, cooking and bread baking share a lot in common. Both benefit from being rigorous and precise until you know your materials really well. Think back to when you first cooked. You used recipes. You measured. And now it’s intuitive. Bread baking is a lot the same. You can change hydration. You can add more salt. Less. Change your flours. Once you know the basic ground rules, suddenly improvisation is open to you. (And hell, depending on your ambient humidity/temperature/what that particular batch of flour is like/etc even that precise recipe in grams has to be adjusted using a bit of intuition.)

Pastry? That’s a world that doesn’t play so well with improvisation. That’s a world where precision and a cook’s mindset doesn’t play as well (excepting of course when you get to be wildly good at it, as it true with any art). The biggest thing I ever did to improve my bread baking was to let go of the idea of precision and it being different from cooking by a ton. Instead I just relaxed. Sure some things will not be perfect, but you still have bread and you can learn from the mistakes for the next time. That’s exactly the same as cooking.

I think the intimidating part is that we cook every single day and it doesn’t really take that long. You forget failure quickly. But with bread, we do it MAYBE once a week and it can take a whole day, so failure FEELS like a bigger thing.

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"I’ve worried about my parenting, wondering if I’m actually a good dad or just someone who plays the character well."

I'm not sure there's much of a difference here.

I once opined that I wasn't sure if I've become less socially awkward as I got older or did I just figure out how to mimic what other people who were not socially awkward were doing and someone told me that it doesn't matter, because if I am doing that with any kind of regularity, it doesn't matter how I arrived there.

So if you're playing the character well, that means you have to be doing the things that would allow you to believe that, which means that you're more than likely doing the right things.

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Mar 6, 2023Liked by Scott Hines

My degree literally has the word “food” in it, I’ve worked at a major-you-have-heard-of-it company in their baking division and had an internship at company that made, amongst other things, French bread for frozen pizzas. Despite all that, I cannot make a real loaf of bread worth anything. Focaccia, yes. Sourdough was a failure (how did the entire thing become hollow?)

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Mar 6, 2023Liked by Scott Hines

"This is a microcosm of my personality at large—I’ve always been someone who favors an essay test over a math problem, a jury-rigged solution over a precise answer, a feeling over a fact. I’m a bullshitter, to put it another way. I’m happy to talk my way in and out of situations without concerning myself too much with nagging exactitudes."

Ha ha yeah I man. So on a completely unrelated topic can I get an annotated list of the buildings you've worked on? Like, a REALLY exhaustive and complete list? No reason, just ~interested~.

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Mar 6, 2023Liked by Scott Hines

Bread is magic beyond my ken.

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founding
Mar 6, 2023Liked by Scott Hines

Bread: the Amanda of foods.

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Mar 6, 2023Liked by Scott Hines

Believe in yourself Scott.

The only way to get good at something is to fail and learn from each failure.

Even success will have an area that isn't perfect since nothing is perfect.

Long ago I took a class (and even longer ago had another thing) at the American Institute of Baking in lovely Manhappiness, KS, as part of the class we had a tour. The professional bakers were learning things such as how to tell you had too much, too little of ingredients/baking/rising/mixing/etc. These were individuals who were already being paid to turn out massive quantities of baked products. And they were still learning.

Patience is so easy to say, hard to practice and mastering is at another level. And you have to have the patience to keep executing/trying/analyzing when you are trying to do better at a thing.

Just ignore Holly's judging.

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Every detail that cookbook shares of his daughter is truly chaotic.

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I’m absolutely a baker over a cook. In another life, I’d have been a lab scientist (instead of a social scientist/statistician). I recently started a new Bread Pitt (name your starter, obviously); I’m mainly using Dan Lepard’s The Handmade Loaf. Easy to follow and LOTS OF PICTURES. I have The Bread Bible too, but while there are some nice recipes, I absolutely abhor the writer’s style (I’ve called her some....choice words, while just trying to read the book. I feel Holly would approve. Can’t really recommend the book but she’s a well known baker for a reason).

Pro tip: parchment paper is your best friend for baking. Pro tip 2: weighing baking ingredients makes things turn out 1000% better.

WaPo has a phenomenal overnight dutch oven bread that’s embarrassingly easy but gets so many compliments. Literally can you stir? Check. Can you They also did a 6 week baking challenge type thing that was a nice intro for non-bakers in late 2019, but the recipes can still be found readily.

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FWIW- Someone told me to put parchment paper on the bottom of the dutch over, helps to put the dough in and take it out.

As for the parenting, my wife recently opined that the skills needed to parent toddlers like carefully watching them, giving them endless attention and structure, is very different from the skills needed for school age kids. They need to be parented much differently with the space to make mistakes, be on their own, manage their own problems, etc. It may be obvious, but you've developed mental muscle memory that you need to unlearn.

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wait two hours before consuming freshly baked bread? what madness is this.

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I had a review at work recently and the manager of my team asked me if I was familiar with Imposter Syndrome. I'm worried that I reacted too enthusiastically.

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As a cook that doesn’t really use or follow recipes baking has always been terrifying.

My pandemic projects included scones and bagels, scone being pretty easy when I realized you could grate the butter and the folding process is easy.

I’ve never tried bread despite a farmhouse levain or sourdough being one of my favorite things ever (esp having relatively close proximity to Tartine bread).

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If it's any consolation, my extremely meticulous, science-brained husband who has multiple chemistry degrees attempted to start a starter from scratch and it failed after 5 days... Sourdough is very hard! But that bread looks incredible!!

In the non-sourdough realm, my husband swears by the Rustic Crusty Loaf recipe from John Kirkwood, who has a delightful YouTube channel, if you're not already acquainted.

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founding

I'm not a baker at all but I've been getting into scratch-made biscuits. Tee-ball compared to the loaves you're making here, but still kinda fun

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Gluten-free bread doesn't care whether you're full of shit; it does what it wants anyway.

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