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Chapter 1: What experiences led Andrew to love baking?
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I don't think there's anything quite like... the smell of freshly baked bread in the morning I remember when I was quite young and my dad brought home a bread making machine which was quite fancy and it was short lived in our household we didn't use it for more than I would probably say a few months in the house but
Those days when we did and waking up to a fresh loaf of bread and smelling that in the morning, getting really excited to tear into that soft loaf was a beautiful memory. It is a beautiful memory and I think formed part of my interest in baking.
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Chapter 2: How does baking evoke memories and emotions?
in later life. Funnily enough, to this day, and then even still, I'm not entirely sure how it is that a bread maker works exactly, how it makes bread in such a light and fluffy manner. You know, it's not stodgy in any way, but of course, if you've made bread before, as you almost certainly have, perhaps at least once in your life,
Then you'll know that there's this sort of process to it, you know, you need to let the dough rise for an amount of time and then you'll, as they say, punch it down, let it rise once again.
on the counter just under a cloth maybe or some cling film and then you would undergo the process of baking only once it has risen to a certain degree but with a bread machine you simply put all the ingredients in and then some hours later it would just produce a perfectly lovely loaf of bread
And like I say, I'm really unsure how it is that it's capable of doing that without all of the extra steps. But I suppose we'll leave that to be a mystery of the bread machine. Hello, my name's Andrew. Thank you for joining me today. Today I'm going to be talking about bread.
Bread.
Well, not just bread. I'm going to be talking about baking. And my experiences with baking in life. Which have been up and down, let's say. I appreciate you being here. I hope that across this conversation, I can evoke some memories of your own from baking in your life. And...
You know, there's a few lovely things in this world that are nice to think about when falling asleep, and few are as calming and serene as the idea of I think that has something to do with the slowness of the process. Of course, it doesn't always have to be slow. You could rush a bake, but I think it's always better to make sure you have plenty of time.
I know that whenever I've attempted to bake in the past, It's always when I've had ample time to do it. Otherwise, well, that sort of takes the fun away, really, doesn't it? I think myself, like many, many out there,
got into baking most during lockdown and I specifically was was doggedly determined to be able to make a really good loaf of bread not like a special loaf of bread at all just normal sandwich bread funnily enough the kind of thing that you might be able to get from a from a bread machine itself but It was my challenge, so to speak, during that time at which I had plenty of time to be baking.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Andrew face while learning to bake bread?
Um, and there's something I think that I really liked about the process, and that's why I would repeat it so often. It gave me sort of a structure to my days. Because, like I say, you have to leave the bread for a little while, a number of hours perhaps, to rise before you return to it. And it could take you several hours across the day to produce your loaf of bread.
And so, it always gave me something to come back to across the day, which was really nice. And it felt slow, but...
quick at the same time not sure how to explain that this process of making the dough initially letting the yeast in the milk the warm milk bubble up letting it sit for a little while before creating that first load of dough and kneading it together into a nice smooth round consistency And then allowing it to rise. Coming back to it, folding it down and kneading it once again.
Making sure you don't over knead it. Otherwise the bread would not rise correctly by the time you need to put it in the oven. And then, I remember towards the end, when I was getting a bit more adventurous with my baking, I would not just make a standard sandwich loaf-shaped bread, but I would knot my bread.
I would, how you say, braid the two pieces of long dough together to make a more interesting shape. And before putting it in the oven, giving it that...
wash of egg white over the top to give it that shiny glossy texture when it comes out of the oven and as well as smelling beautiful of course it looks so amazing when you pull the fresh steaming loaf of bread from the oven and I haven't actually baked a bread
since my last lockdown loaf of bread I wouldn't be surprised if it came out terrible if I tried to do it today it's funny I think life might have gotten quite a lot busier in that time and part of me wishes that I would introduce baking into my life again to slow things down a bit There is something meditative about baking, most certainly. If you allow it to be, of course.
I think I personally started to have this idealized imagining of baking. from these YouTube videos I watched some time ago, and it was when I was attempting to make a batch of cookies for a special occasion. I'm not entirely sure what it was now,
but I wanted them to be especially good so you know how one does they find themselves searching something like the very best cookies the ultimate cookie recipe or something like that and the first video that I saw attracted me immediately and I remember the thumbnail though unfortunately I don't remember who made the videos themselves but
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of patience in the baking process?
But I quietly made the cookies to myself and I remember there was a process of melting butter in a pan and browning it for a particular deep flavor of the cookies. and you would whisk this brown butter into first a mixture of brown sugar and vanilla extract and then you would fold in the flour
and the recommendation was to put in these large chunks of dark chocolate this was a really rich cookie recipe and they were these sort of large circular about as big as the palm of one's hand sort of American style cookies that in the end turned out fantastic they really were excellent Now, I remember eating them vividly because they had such a soft bite.
But I don't actually remember where I was eating them. I know it was a special occasion. But I can't. I don't think it will come to me. But it's funny how that happens. Sometimes a taste, a smell, a sight will bring back a memory from somewhere deep within. Put you right in the place.
But I guess sometimes a taste, a smell, a sight is so powerful, so vivid that it is simply the sensation that makes an impression to the point where everything else around it dissolves. I guess in my mind, Whatever particular auspicious time it was, was ephemeral and irrelevant to what was in fact more formative, really, this incredible taste of cookies.
And I've made those cookies several times since I first learned the recipe. It's quite an easy one as well. It's funny how when you learn particular ways of doing things it totally changes the way you think.
You know I always used to think of baking as this particular science I guess where you need to get everything really precise and you run your finger down a long list of ingredients and method steps and you must follow them very particular with your weights and scales and getting your measurements right, and filling the measuring jug up just to the right point.
And I think it would be a lie to say that baking is not a science to a certain degree, but I think in that particular recipe, I learned that there is an art, absolutely, to baking. And that, not just baking, but I think cooking, making any food, as with art, sometimes you really must go with your gut. But of course you can't do that until you've followed recipes to the T for some time.
you might be able to make a comparison to learning music perhaps sometimes it's best to learn the pieces note for note practice them over and over incessantly until you can play them without thinking and then only then can you begin to inject particular other things into it things that come to mind improvisationally naturally And I certainly become a lot more improvisational with my baking.
Since that cookie recipe, I remember a particular time I made what I feel was probably the best cake I've ever made. Though I have probably only made a number of cakes that I could count on both hands during my lifetime. However, the reason that this was such a particularly poignant moment for me was because I wanted to make a cake, but I hadn't expressly gone out and bought.
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Chapter 5: How did Andrew's baking journey change during lockdown?
And from, like I say, having made a few things in the past, had that little bit of experience which transforms into intuition. I knew that if I put these raisins into this cake now, they would crisp and burn and taste vile when they came out of the oven.
and so it was my idea from the top of my head to steep them first in hot tea so as to put water into them, hydrate them further so that they might survive the baking process a little better and lo and behold taking it out of the oven
they were the best part of the cake the flavor was deep it was rich it had brown sugar and cinnamon in it but these raisins had maintained their hydration and they were so delicious they would fall out as little jewels when you'd eat the cake and they were almost like small grapes in the way that they tasted
And it was only a little bit after that that I discovered that steeping raisins in tea was in fact something that people did regularly. But I was always very proud of myself for having thought of that off the top of my head rather than looking up a solution. I used that intuition to improvise. Although, having said that, one never really knows what sneaks up into the subconscious.
There is a chance that at some point I could well have read it in a recipe somewhere else and completely forgotten it. As irrelevant information at the time, or perhaps I saw it on television, or on an episode of the Great British Bake Off, or something like that, and it just lodged itself into my subconscious until I needed it most.
But then I suppose you could look at every kind of invention in that way, right? Just these things that lodge themselves into our subconscious, make a home there, become part of the tapestry of things that exist in our mind but we don't know that they do. And then, as and when, life happens to us and... This information needs to be called upon.
It rises forth, but it has become such a part of our tapestry that the thoughts seem to be our own. But of course, they're not. And, in that sense, I suppose you could say all of our thoughts are like this, because how on earth could we have an original thought without having seen it, or perhaps, shall I say, experienced it first, to have it then lodged and catalogued into our mind?
And so, I most certainly did see it somewhere, hear about it somewhere, I don't think I'm that inventive, that much of a genius to have thought of it entirely in a silo. It was almost certainly on the Great British Bake Off, because by this point I had seen perhaps three or four seasons of the show and was an avid fan.
I had such a tradition when the series would come onto the BBC of sitting down for every episode and absolutely non-negotiably requiring some kind of baked good whilst I was watching it and also a cup of tea to go with it. A cup of
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Chapter 6: What unique techniques did Andrew use in his baking?
I'd love to say that I was quite a lot younger when this was the case, but I was still, I think, in my mid-twenties. I was living in with my mum and dad And I would pop to the shops to get some sort of, I think it would more often than not be some kind of small party cake that was of the chocolate fudge variety, perhaps a Victoria sponge, often very partial to a red velvet cake.
I had a very funny moment recently whilst I was on holiday with my partner and my young son in Norfolk just a few weeks ago, and we went to a small cafe. It was the only cafe that was nearby where we were staying. Well, that's not quite true. There were two cafes, but on this particular day, it was the only one that was open. This was a really small town.
Like I say, in Norfolk, just on the coast. And it was beautiful. Really lovely stay. Beautiful to be by the beach. It was the first time my son saw the sand and the sea. Which he found, I think, probably too much to comprehend. Although he really enjoyed staring at it. He wouldn't stop staring at it. And that was a beautiful moment. And one of these days... We were taking it slow, you know.
The whole holiday, really, we were taking it slow. When you have young kids, these ideas of packing in your days and getting as much as you can done sort of go out the window, I think. And it's wiser to choose one thing that you think you'd like to do for that day and make... slow and calm efforts to do that one thing. If you manage to do that, then you know you're doing well for the day. But
this one day we were at the cafe and I remember sitting there, it was quite a warm day probably the warmest day of our three day trip and I was sat in this really comfortable sofa the whole decor, the theme was quite new age, it was a vegan cafe and It had all these beautiful pieces of art, like quite colourful, mixed media stuff.
There was oil paintings, there was stained glass, there was art made of things like the debris and the pebbles from the local seashore. And all of the sofas and furniture had really interesting sort of dare I say, psychedelic kind of patterns on the upholstery and on the blankets that they'd throw over the top of it.
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Chapter 7: How does Andrew compare vegan baking to traditional baking?
And it was quite a nice, gentle, relaxing atmosphere. There weren't too many people in the cafe with us, which was a good thing because it was quite a small cafe. As cafes go, But they had a wonderful selection of vegan cakes there. And I will add that I myself am not vegan.
Although I respect it highly, I think if I were less of a hypocrite, I would do what I believe to be the right thing and be a vegan. But unfortunately I am, and perhaps one day I'll grow up enough to be different.
in mind around this but the reason we were in the vegan cafe was simply because it was the only other cafe that was open um not to say that it was in any way hindered because of its exclusive dietary provisions it was a wonderful cafe we had a lovely breakfast and a lovely piece of cake afterwards and
It was quite a funny moment when the owner of the cafe was taking an order from some other people just across the way. Not, I'd say, less than five feet away from where we were sat. And as such, in that kind of environment, it kind of feels like everybody's in the room together. A bit more so, especially in this kind of new agey, sort of open plan environment.
almost domestic style setup that they had in this cafe.
and so he was taking their cake orders and they had three or four different kinds of cake and i remember them bringing it into the cafe in the morning it was a bit of a rush because the cakes arrived late whilst the cafe was still open so the owner was a little bit worried that he wasn't going to have anything to serve to the customers outside of his savory breakfast offerings
but then whoever it is that locally bakes the cakes uh brought them round and they looked big and beautiful and they certainly tasted excellent i think for the fact that they contained no animal product they were incredible in fact you know comparable honestly i rate rate them highly um
But he was taking these orders from these people, and he was going through the cakes that they had, because somebody asked, well, what cakes do you have? And he was saying that he had a Victoria sponge and a dense chocolate cake, and then he said he had a red velvet cake, and... Someone asked, well, what is a red velvet cake? And he stumbled. He furrowed his brow, and he attempted to explain.
He said, well, it's a red cake. The sponge is red. I don't know, he said. I'm not sure. And so I interjected at this point, as if I was someone who worked at the cafe myself. And of course explaining that a red velvet cake is a mixture of vanilla and chocolate that has been dyed red for decorative effect. And they didn't go with the red velvet in the end, but...
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Chapter 8: What memorable baking experiences does Andrew share from his childhood?
Kind of felt like walking into somebody's house, in a way, a house where you were very welcome and very looked after. And they'd made that restaurant, funnily enough, sometime just after lockdown. And it was the only vegan restaurant, I say restaurant, vegan cafe in the local area. for some miles.
And so, I suppose in that respect, they were very niche, but had quite a strong and dedicated clientele, regular flow of customers. And he himself had actually moved from further away, I think about three or four hours away, to help his mother-in-law, who was in fact the person who initially started the café,
and they'd been running it ever since and that it used to be as just a small shop that only sold the cakes and you know what I can totally believe that because the cakes were good enough to start a business of their own but then they expanded into the broader cafe that they are it was lovely people a lovely man And we spent a really nice morning slash afternoon in that shop.
In fact, after we'd eaten our cake, we were quite tired and our son had fallen asleep as well. And when he falls asleep, we generally like to let him sleep if we possibly can. He seemed fairly relaxed in the cafe environment with the Gentle chatting going on around us, and the light tinkling and clinking of cutlery and cups.
It was a very serene ambience, so serene, in fact, that we ourselves, myself and my partner, were beginning to fall asleep on the sofas.
And when we realized we had, and the owner of the cafe came over to take our plates, sort of, well, I woke up, I sat up a little bit, and in realization, looking a little bit embarrassed, because it had, I think at this point, been about 30 minutes since we'd finished our meals. and not ordered anything else.
I simply sat in one of the largest sofas that the small cafe had and began to fall asleep in the corner and almost about to sort of get up from the seat, sort of embarrassingly sort of saying, oh, I apologize. And he was very emphatic that we should sit down, relax, enjoy ourselves, not worry.
about the fact that we were taking up seats or whatever just um enjoy ourselves which we did we slept for some little time afterwards Yeah, I really liked that man. I thought he was the perfect person to be running such a business, and I suppose that's why it is that he was doing so.
And those cakes, I mean, I don't think I'll forget those cakes, because it's hard to find a vegan cake that tastes as good as those did. There was a time a little while ago when I was into trying to
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