Hello all! Good to see you again. Been a while since my last post. Life has been very busy! I have big news! Starting next month, I will be attending baking school at the San Francisco Baking Institute. It’s an eighteen-week program, and I will be relocating to the Bay Area for it. (Tyler’s coming too! To SF, not to baking school – he’ll be barista-ing!) This is obviously a huge change, and everyone’s been asking me if I’m excited — I think I’ll start feeling excited once the drudgery of moving is over. Also, this is a bittersweet move, as Madison is a place I’ve truly grown to love, with people I will dearly miss. As of now I have no plans to move back to Madison or the midwest, though it’s certainly possible it could happen down the road. This is a very difficult parting. That being said, I’m going to California, where (all within the past year) my entire immediate family has also relocated to. And I have extended family there, too. I was born in the bay area, and my family lived there til I was 6; when I was 14, I moved to southern California for boarding school (my own choice!). Geographically, my life can be roughly plotted out as moves back and forth between California and the midwest. CA, KS, CA, MN, WI, and now CA again. Where will I end up long-term? Who knows. I have strong loves for both areas. I would also love to live on the east coast someday, and I adored my semester in Glasgow, Scotland, though Europe is awfully far away. Right now, the west coast beckons. I love the idea of (when I someday own a house) having fruit trees in my backyard, having milder weather after nine years of upper-midwest winters and a similar number of summers. And I love the innovative feeling of coastal U.S. cities. On a trip to Washington, D.C. and Baltimore a few years ago, I saw my first cupcake shop. Cupcakes were in full swing there, but it wasn’t until after I went on that trip that Madison’s first cupcake shop opened. I’d like to be in a trend-setting environment — not to say that trends are never started in the midwest (and I think it’s good and important that creative and innovative people are in the midwest creating and innovating, which they are! especially with regard to food in Madison), but it just feels like the atmosphere for innovation is so ripe on the coasts. I’m excited to see what that’s like.
Anyway, I wanted this post to get to bread eventually! I’ve been baking less as I’ve been dealing with the logistics of a cross-country move (and because it’s been blazingly hot), but what baking I’ve been doing has been mainly in the area of sourdough. Towards the end of April, I decided to try my hand at making my own sourdough starter…and somehow, the thing came to life and grew! The starter has given rise (ha) to several successful loaves of bread, one failed batch of onion rolls, and a couple of delicious batches of sourdough pancakes. I’m loving the magic of sourdough; I think fermentation in general holds a special intrigue to me. Fermentation happens in all bread baking, but it’s most obvious in sourdough, where you can bake loaves of bread to which you add no commercial yeast at all! It’s amazing! Cultivating the yeast that already lives in your environment, harnessing its power and watching it leaven bread. Wow. I definitely want to learn more about fermentation — with my other hobbies including cheese making and mead making, I’ve realized this is a common thread.
For now, here are a few photos of sourdough creations:
The next few weeks will be filled with sorting, packing, apartment-hunting, and the actual move, so I don’t know how soon I’ll be able to post next – but I hope to have many enthusiastic posts about my adventures in baking school when my program begins!
Long time no blog
July 4, 2012 by Lucy
Hello all! Good to see you again. Been a while since my last post. Life has been very busy! I have big news! Starting next month, I will be attending baking school at the San Francisco Baking Institute. It’s an eighteen-week program, and I will be relocating to the Bay Area for it. (Tyler’s coming too! To SF, not to baking school – he’ll be barista-ing!) This is obviously a huge change, and everyone’s been asking me if I’m excited — I think I’ll start feeling excited once the drudgery of moving is over. Also, this is a bittersweet move, as Madison is a place I’ve truly grown to love, with people I will dearly miss. As of now I have no plans to move back to Madison or the midwest, though it’s certainly possible it could happen down the road. This is a very difficult parting. That being said, I’m going to California, where (all within the past year) my entire immediate family has also relocated to. And I have extended family there, too. I was born in the bay area, and my family lived there til I was 6; when I was 14, I moved to southern California for boarding school (my own choice!). Geographically, my life can be roughly plotted out as moves back and forth between California and the midwest. CA, KS, CA, MN, WI, and now CA again. Where will I end up long-term? Who knows. I have strong loves for both areas. I would also love to live on the east coast someday, and I adored my semester in Glasgow, Scotland, though Europe is awfully far away. Right now, the west coast beckons. I love the idea of (when I someday own a house) having fruit trees in my backyard, having milder weather after nine years of upper-midwest winters and a similar number of summers. And I love the innovative feeling of coastal U.S. cities. On a trip to Washington, D.C. and Baltimore a few years ago, I saw my first cupcake shop. Cupcakes were in full swing there, but it wasn’t until after I went on that trip that Madison’s first cupcake shop opened. I’d like to be in a trend-setting environment — not to say that trends are never started in the midwest (and I think it’s good and important that creative and innovative people are in the midwest creating and innovating, which they are! especially with regard to food in Madison), but it just feels like the atmosphere for innovation is so ripe on the coasts. I’m excited to see what that’s like.
Anyway, I wanted this post to get to bread eventually! I’ve been baking less as I’ve been dealing with the logistics of a cross-country move (and because it’s been blazingly hot), but what baking I’ve been doing has been mainly in the area of sourdough. Towards the end of April, I decided to try my hand at making my own sourdough starter…and somehow, the thing came to life and grew! The starter has given rise (ha) to several successful loaves of bread, one failed batch of onion rolls, and a couple of delicious batches of sourdough pancakes. I’m loving the magic of sourdough; I think fermentation in general holds a special intrigue to me. Fermentation happens in all bread baking, but it’s most obvious in sourdough, where you can bake loaves of bread to which you add no commercial yeast at all! It’s amazing! Cultivating the yeast that already lives in your environment, harnessing its power and watching it leaven bread. Wow. I definitely want to learn more about fermentation — with my other hobbies including cheese making and mead making, I’ve realized this is a common thread.
For now, here are a few photos of sourdough creations:
The next few weeks will be filled with sorting, packing, apartment-hunting, and the actual move, so I don’t know how soon I’ll be able to post next – but I hope to have many enthusiastic posts about my adventures in baking school when my program begins!
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