Baking Time

A new series

Dear Readers,

Welcome to a new thing!

Baking Time is a place for stories about the acts of baking. You’ll find vignettes about home, cottage and professional bakers. Myths, fables, and occasional recipes. Interviews with baking and baking-adjacent folks – which could be any one of you!

Baking Time is a different container. A cookie jar, a bread box, a scrap book full of notes and clippings. Meeting Gretchen Kopmanis, who runs Czechbox Bakery in Michigan last fall, is what inspired this. I can’t wait for you to read her take on heritage baking in the next edition!

I planned to kick this off with a St. Patrick’s Day salute to soda bread, but time kept happening and here we are, trying to plan when to make hot cross buns. Searching for intel on the crunchy cinnamon topping that Freihofer’s put on theirs. Okay, that is my particular bread bunnyhole, and I go down it every year.

I’m not sure why I want to recreate that crispy, dark, cinnamon shell that came on the cross-less — yes the cinnamon ones had no crosses — hot cross buns this bakery made. Bella Napoli, another Troy bakery, is doing a good job making a version. And I have no interest in using white flour! I will likely make mine sourdough or with fresh yeast — whoo boy, I love that flavor. I’ll use golden raisins, and diced dried papaya instead of citron. Did Freihofer’s even use citron?

I’m not ever going for replication, which is why I haven’t become a recipe developer. I resist writing down what I do, and am allergic to following recipes, even ones I invent. I improvise galore, and I know this has something to do with who I am.

I pretend that every single day is going to be something brand new, that the days will not unfold as others have before, with patterns and predictable elements. Like breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every day seems like it should be a surprise, right? Especially as spring begins. The snowdrops stun. Today I saw a crocus!

In reality, the patterns of the seasons, the recipes for everyday living are quite beautiful, not boring at all. Despite my instinct to always hunt for another world.

I have been to a couple of grain planets recently: one in Seneca Falls for Cornell’s Organic Field Crops and Dairy Conference, and for the Vermont Grain Growers Conference. Both were stellar days, full of people figuring out how to grow and use grains in local and regional systems.

Snippets from the Vermont Grain Growers Conference, a single day full of people describing their grain projects. Rusted Rooster's tortilla chips were terrific!

Most importantly, Dear Bread Readers, Baking Time is a forum for you!

I always want to hear and highlight your voices, so here’s a spot for me to listen. To learn what baking means to you and what baking you are doing. To learn what tastes from your childhood you are chasing, or family traditions that live on in lore.

If you have an idea or story you want to share, please let me know!

Yours, Amy