SusieJ's Advent Calendar December 09, 2011

Practice, practice, practice

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.

How do you become a good baker? Practice, practice, practice. At least with baking, you can eat the results, the failures, too.

My friend Cecily recently posted a photo of her first crafting effort along with a snarky comment that this was why she doesn't craft ("anti-craft," I think she called herself). I thought it looked pretty good; I couldn't have done better. The problem is that Cecily is a good writer, and expects to be equally good at most creative things. Well, she's been reading since before kindergarten, and probably writing since not long after. She has practiced writing for more than three decades. Of course she's good! But she's only made one gingerbread train in her life.

You can't succeed without trying, and without trying again, and again, and again. There will be failures. Oh, will there be failures in the kitchen. But if you can figure out what went wrong, you get to call a failure a learning experience, which sounds nicer.

Reading books and watching cooking shows can teach a lot, but they only go halfway. It's practice that perfects. The more you bake, the more you know about how it should work. Should the dough be this wet? Was it this wet the last time? How difficult was it to handle? How did it bake up?

[Glüwein and house-made bread at Brauhaus Schmitz, 2009]Baking a recipe the second time is always easier than the first, just as driving an unfamiliar route is easier the second time. Even without the details, you have a general idea, and you know what gave you problems and can prepare for it. The tenth time is even easier, and eventually, you've memorized the recipe.

I can whip out a batch of scones or cream biscuits in under half an hour for weekend breakfasts because I have baked scones or biscuits nearly every weekend for years. Sometimes the biscuits don't rise, or they taste soapy the next day (too much baking powder). Burned cupcakes tell me to dump the muffin pan with the black bottom.

Bake things you like to eat, things you won't mind eating over and over, especially things you would like to eat if they aren't perfect. Start simple and work your way up to wedding cakes. Or just jump into wedding cakes, but bake a lot of them.