Editor’s note: Bake Better is a new column that focuses on home baking. Look for the column online every other Wednesday and in print alternating Thursdays in the Food section.
I grew up in an Italian American household in upstate New York, where my mother — a public school teacher of 30 years and the greatest cook and baker that I have ever known — kept three cookbooks.
I, a professional baker, am the owner of a quadrillion cookbooks. All of them are beautiful and useful, and, shamefully, too many of these wonderful books sit in messy stacks around my desk, pleading with me to be a better student.
I’m working on it, but in the meantime, my mother still owns three, and the titles probably wouldn’t surprise you: James Beard’s “American Cookery,” a rarely used copy of “Joy of Cooking,” and a charmingly ancient copy of Craig Claiborne’s “New York Times Cookbook,” complete with margin notes and my grandmother’s cheesecake recipe faithfully handwritten in the back endpaper.
Why does the Times’ cookbook own such a special place in my mother’s home? For one, it’s a great book. For another, because newspaper recipes are meant to be shared, loved and improved upon. They’re a great exercise in community cooking.
My mom loves newspaper recipes, I love newspaper recipes, and because of this, I am honored to join The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as a baking columnist.
Let’s establish some ground rules.
Stand mixers, specialty baking ingredients and fancy baking gadgets have nothing to do with good baking. Do a stand mixer and a scale make things easy and replicable? Yes. Will you bake better with these things? Not necessarily.
What matters more is the courage to try something new, good humor in case it all goes wrong, and some leftover courage to give it another shot.
If a piece of equipment or a special ingredient is critical to a recipe, I’ll let you know, and recommend an easily accessible substitution or technique.
Rule No. 2: Good baking, like good cooking, is not a science project. We bake to nourish. If you’re into ratios and percentages, that’s wonderful. If math is not your thing, that’s fine. Either way, baking is for you.
I once worked for a masterful French baker who had little more than a grade school education, but lots of passion and intuition. If you have the passion to nourish and learn, we will develop baking intuition together, through practice.
Our first recipe is about as useful as it gets. Hero rolls, hoagie rolls, or sub rolls — no matter what you call them, this basic riff on an Italian olive oil bread can be purposed in many ways: cut the dough a bit smaller to get wonderful hot dog rolls, shape the dough into buns for burger night, or coat with butter and a bit of coarse salt before baking for fragrant, savory dinner rolls.
Credit: Nicole Lewis
Credit: Nicole Lewis
Chris Wilkins has been a professional baker for 12 years. He is a two-time James Beard Award nominee and the founder and co-owner of Root Baking Co. and Pizza Jeans. Submit your baking questions to bakebetterajc@gmail.com.
About the Author
