Saturday, April 5, 2014

Kitchen Creativity

Picking a topic for this project wasn’t easy for me, but I started thinking about what I would do if I had more free time, and baking was one of those things. There are so many things that count as baking, and so many opportunities to be creative. The literal definition of baking is to cook food by dry heat without direct exposure to a flame. Not necessarily that difficult, but because it is so simple, it leaves so much room to experiment and try new things.
According to an online article from the BBC History Magazine, "in the Middle Ages, baking was considered a luxury that few were able to enjoy. But for those who could afford a wood-burning stove and to heat it, would start with bread. The better quality, the higher up the social order you are. In the 18th century, cake baking soared in popularity." While baking is still somewhat common, it is nowhere near as common as it used to be. People are often too busy and can’t spare the time to be as elaborate in the kitchen like they used to.

                                                                                 Some of the major contributors to this field include Betty Crocker, Duff Goldman, and Paula Dean. Baking is such a huge field and so many people have been successful, but I chose 3 names that we might be most familiar with. Baking is more commonly known as making cakes, cookies, and things of that sort, so that’s what I am going to focus on! According to BakeInfo.com, the biggest cake to ever be made was made in Alabama in 1989 and weighed 58 tons! That’s a lot of cake! In order to do that, you have to be creative. I mean you have to think about how in the heck you’re going to mix all that stuff up and then bake it all and even on top of that how to present it so that it actually looks good and not extremely overwhelming. Something I didn’t know about baking was that presentation is almost as important as taste. If it looks good and is presented well, odds are it tastes better. In the more competitive parts of the field, people are actually judged on not only taste, but presentation. That just fascinated me. I’m not very good at cooking or baking, but if I had to try to make it taste really good on top of making it look good, it would be a disaster.
There's so much potential for baking, and if you have some basic ingredients, a lot of fun things can come out of spending time in your kitchen!



Works Cited
Emma McFarnon. "A Brief History of Baking." History Extra.com (The Official website of BBC               History Magazine). October 2013. Google. Web. 5 April 2014

"Bake Info." Baking Industry Research Trust. Google. Web. 5 April 2014



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