"You can cook like a man.
But you can't bake like a man, because men don't bake.
Nancy said that because baking is easy, it's hard;
that because anyone can, a lot of men can't, or won't."
-- Tom Junod, "Men Don't Bake," Esquire.com
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| Sam 8-1-14 |
"Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man.
Bake me a cake as fast as you can."
-- English nursery rhyme
My son Sam has loved baking ever since he was a toddler.
I used to swaddle him in one of my aprons, folded over and double wrapped around his tiny boy body, and stand him beside me up on a kitchen chair.
I'd measure out flour and sugar and he'd dump them into the mixing bowl. Or I'd give him his own cups, bowls, spoons and ingredients and let him make up his own concoctions. He liked making an imaginary something that he called "Timbuktu Yummy." Only he knew what it was.
Sam's earliest "real" baking experiments were hit and miss, and usually he trashed the kitchen. But experimenting -- sometimes succeeding, sometimes not -- is how my independent-minded, self-sufficient, precise and determined son figured out baking for himself. I've coached and guided and helped along the way, but mostly I've just let him run with it. I always figured that if the experiment failed miserably (and some have), I wouldn't be out much (flour and eggs are cheap), and the lesson learned would more than offset the loss.
As a result, at age 19, Sam's cookies, muffins, biscuits, bread, brownies and pies are ridiculously good. He always bakes from scratch and pays close attention to important baking details like room-temperature butter, tempering his yeast, fully pre-heating the oven and measuring things exactly.
Sam bakes for everybody -- his friends, our neighbor, the ladies at work, the nurses at the hospital where he volunteers, the fire fighters at the firehouse where he took a CPR course. Sometimes he even bakes for us.
Also, because he's a compulsive neat-freak, the kitchen is always spit-shined and spotless when he's done.
As a mother of two sons, I feel like one of my most important responsibilities is to send my boys into the world as young men who are capable of feeding themselves and others without relying on takeout and drive thru, whether it's grilling a burger, building a proper sandwich, scrambling eggs, baking a perfect pumpkin pie or loaf of homemade bread.
But they say a man can't live by bread alone.
That's why it's a really good thing Sam can also make espresso chocolate chunk muffins with streusel.
