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The Joy of Stress Baking
This is why everyone’s baking, if you’re confused. Also, some recipes if you’re a baker!
Even though I love to, I normally only bake on special occasions. After all, it’s time consuming, and I don’t need three dozen cookies or an entire cake to eat by myself.
That’s all changed, with this pandemic. Now I’m baking up a storm and super grateful my neighbors aren’t so germ-phobic they won’t take some so I can’t eat it all by myself.
Everything that usually keeps me from baking is why baking is saving my sanity right now. Baking can be fairly straightforward, but the yummiest things are often labor and time-intensive. You use a ton of bowls and spoons, so you have to wash a ton of dishes. Breads might take multiple rises, each taking hours if you’re in cooler weather. And you have to concentrate when you bake. You can’t just chuck a bunch of things in a pot, correct the seasoning later, and call it stew. You’ve got to measure, tick off each ingredient, make sure everything is present and accounted for, or the recipe might not work.
Which is why those of us who know how to bake immediately started baking. Yes, it’s comforting to cook. But baking is work. Delicious work, but work nonetheless. And I’d rather focus on batter or dough than focus on a pandemic.
