Baking class.

Lewisburg.

I never thought of myself as much of a baker, though I've found a developing appreciation for precision in cooking over the past few years. It started, I think, with sausage-making. Cooking's generally flexible and forgiving when it comes to seasonings; taste it as you go, and fix it, little bit by little bit. Sausage, being raw meat and all, doesn't lend itself to that as easily. So it helps to have some ground rules in place, the most important of which is: 8 grams of salt per pound of meat and fat.¹ It's the right amount of salt, all mixed inside, since it's essentially impossible to fix that while cooking.

Since then, I've been sliding into baking. Bread's always been my department, even more so now that I don't know anyplace to buy good, crusty, artisanal-style loaves. Then I maneuvered into pies - made much easier since acquiring a full-size food processor - and into egg-based magic. I can't stand from-the-box or grocery store cakes, since most of them lack any actual texture and are wretchedly sweet, but I've come to adore European-style sponge cakes, like génoise and the dryer biscuit.²

This comes at a convenient time for me, as I've recently been asked to teach a series of cooking classes at the university's Craft Center. The options are essentially unlimited, as long as it fits within the available budget. And can be prepared in the somewhat limited facilities at hand, during a two-hour class.

Okay, so that does put a cap on things.³ But since we're looking at students, mostly novice cooks, presumably with the same sort of shoddy kitchen equipment I had at their age, perhaps that's not such a bad thing. Might as well work with what they're used to, right?

Now, cooking seems to me like a difficult thing to teach because it's best done as an involved activity, not just a demonstration. Granted, if you're already an accomplished cook, you can watch, take notes, and probably hit pretty near the target on the first shot. But if your background consists of warming according to the directions in a microwave? Where to start?

So I picked baking. At its very simplest, such as a loaf of bread, it needs minimal equipment. A bowl, a wooden spoon, and a baking sheet or a loaf pan won't set you back but a few bucks. And the techniques, as a rule, aren't particularly mysterious. Not quite to the level of gauging the doneness of a turkey in the oven, at least. This sort of thing I can teach students. It's inexpensive; the food they'll make is good at room temperature, the next day and sometimes after; and there's nothing I'll go over that they can't handle.

So, in seven classes, we'll hit the following:

1. Yeast Breads - How to make your own homemade bread, and how to tweak the basic recipe into dozens of variations.
   
   
2. Sweet Breads - How to make cinnamon rolls far superior to anything out of a cardboard tube.
   
   
3. Bagels & Pretzels - Because homemade, crispy and chewy bagels are much better than those soft, almost cakey bread rings you find these days.
   
   
4. Quickbreads - How to make cornbread, banana bread and muffins galore. All of which take less time to mix than you'll have to wait for the oven to preheat.
   
   
5. Biscuits & Scones - Again, because homemade and fresh from the oven trumps the grocery store variety - the eerily shelf-stable stuff - any day.
   
   
6. Cookies - How to make chocolate chip cookies. Because if you only know how to make one type of cookie, that's the one. (Though brownies - good, fudgy ones that aren't simply undercooked batter - are a close second.)
   
   
7. Cakes - Last, because a true, unleavened sponge cake is the most difficult of the recipes in class, especially if you're whipping egg whites by hand.⁴ But it's just one of those things that doesn't even come close to the sugar-filled prepackaged junk that we've all become far to accustomed to.

It all sounds like fun to me. I can only hope that the students think so, too.

* * * * *

¹Yes, I know that's mixing systems of measurement. But I buy my meat by the pound, and grams are easier to think about for very small quantities than fractions of an ounce.

²I prefer the former, but a biscuit is more traditional for Sachertorte-style cakes.

³Meat cooking may be a rare occasion, for example, just based on cost. At a cap of around seven dollars per person, per class, for supplies, I need to be aware of how even little things add up.

⁴I used to think that whipping a meringue with a whisk was less than entirely fun, until I found out that my brother managed it with a fork once. He was making eggnog, and at some point - an hour in, maybe - just couldn't bring himself to give up.