Measurements

 

I like to prepare and measure ingredients sometimes the night before I am going to bake.  Tomorrow I have three batches of three different items I will be baking early so that friends and family can pick them up throughout the day.  Since I make everything as fresh as possible (as in same day as pickup) that means I'm sometimes up early for baking, and when I plan to be up early I often prep and measure the night before.  It's a great time saver.  It doesn't mean I get up later.  I still get up early but I can work in the kitchen at a more leisurely pace since I have trays of ingredients all ready to grab and mix.  All the plates and bowls of ingredients are labeled by weight and item, placed on trays, and stashed on high shelves or in the fridge.  By the time that baking is all done tomorrow morning I will feel like I've already been ultra-productive for the day, and I love that feeling.  That means if I really want to, I can just loaf around all day and not feel guilty in the least.

When I'm measuring out things, it can be quite exciting.  Perhaps that's not entirely true, but let me explain.  Sometimes I grab a block of butter and cut off a chunk, put it on a plate that is already on my kitchen scale, and lo and behold, the weight of the chunk in grams is exactly what I need for the recipe.  It doesn't happen every time, but as I accumulate more and more kitchen time as the years go by, I am often quite close on the first try when measuring all sorts of things.  Of course, when it happens that I get it exactly right on the first try, I immediately expect it to happen again ... and again ... and again.  It doesn't, but it's exciting to think that it could.  It almost becomes a game.

It's the only part of cooking and baking that I think can be treated like a game.  After all, trying to bake something faster is just not something that is feasible, so you can't race against your own best time.  What would do .... turn up the oven to 500 F and try to cook something in half the time?  You'd burn the outside, leave the inside raw, and have something totally inedible.  But at least ingredient measurements can be treated as a game .... if one wants to do that.  I don't actually really care all that much if I get the measurement perfect on the first try .... except when I actually do.  Does that make sense?  I simply mean that even the measuring process is just part of the overall ritual of baking, a ritual that is conducive to taking oneself out of the normal flow of activity in the world.  But when I get that first chunk of butter on the plate and it's exactly the right weight on the first try, I am eager to try it again and see if I can do it twice in a row.  And as soon as I measure out a second ingredient and get it close perhaps but not exact, I return to my non-game demeanor.  Now it's back to the ritual.  But the ritual is fine.  The ritual is grand.