When me and my bruv were sprogs, at every opportunity we’d scoot round to our Grandmothers house, she was a fine lovely lady and she used to bake stuff. She was always up to her elbows in some mixture or other and her home smelt delightful.
Bread, cakes, pies, muffins, biscuits…the full monty.
She’d take the bread out of the oven, me and bruv would sit salivating waiting for it to cool slightly before ripping into it.
Liberal amounts of butter melting into the still warm bread, me and bruv scarfing it down , warnings of “You’ll get stomach ache again” went unheeded, the bread was so delicious that stomach ache was a small price to pay.
Sadly our Gran died some years back, we miss the old gal and I can’t go past a bakers without remembering those days of youth when all was right with the world.
People don’t seem to bake as much these days, why is that?.
Probably time is a factor, together with the existence of quality bakers.
I bake bread, cakes, cookies quite often, though never in summer months.
It’s very easy to learn how to bake bread, for instance. Perhaps it’s something that you might want to try when the weather cools down a bit. Those smells are bound to bring back great souvenirs.
I enjoy making bread most of all, there’s something cathartic, satisfying in an atavistic way, to punching down dough.
As a professional baker, if you decide to bake bread at home, let me recommend Beard on Bread, by the late, great James Beard. It’s my favorite bread book of them all, although there are some other good ones out there. Keep on practising if you don’t get it right the first time, and Beard does have a trouble shooting section if your loaf doesn’t turn out just as you want it.