Following on from my home baking post, yesterday I realised that the wooden spoon I use for baking has become an essential.
As I spend so much time typing on a keyboard, using my iPhone, apps and software, one of the biggest pleasures I take in baking, and cooking generally, is working with ‘real’ things: ingredients I can touch, taste and smell.
I am fascinated by the transition when individual ingredients such as butter and sugar combine to create a fluffy, creamy new substance.
Add eggs, flour and other ingredients and the mixture changes again.
Put it in the oven and it transforms from ‘paste’ into a solid – hopefully not too solid – structure with completely different characteristics. Where has the new texture, aroma and taste come from?
It’s magic.
That’s why I tend to do almost everything by hand and my trusty baking wooden spoon, not used for anything else, made me realise that.