Holiday Baking Can Be Joyful

When I started culinary school, the bakers and savory cooking students were divided from the beginning. It didn’t take long for the usual comparisons to start: our instructors said that savory cooking was looser, allowing us to add a extra pinch of spice or clove or two of garlic, and measure our olive oil in glugs poured straight from the bottle. Whereas in the bread and pastry kitchens, an extra dash of salt might kill the yeast in a bread dough, and that imprecise measurement of olive oil could very well break an emulsion. The savory cooks were said to be more free-form, while pastry cooks and bakers were thought to be a bit uptight.

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It’s easy to draw generalizations about cooking and the people who do it, but you and I know that they aren’t accurate. And personalities aside, there are plenty of savory cooks who measure precisely (like the ones working in the Food & Wine Test Kitchen). But at this time of the year, after a few months of throwing together lazy summer salads followed by casual pastas and braises made with fall produce, I enjoy the shift to the specificity of measuring leaveners, weighing flour, and whipping royal icing to the perfect consistency. It’s become part of the shifting seasons in my kitchen.

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But being exact doesn’t mean things have to be difficult — I don’t have the time or patience for that. Instead, I’ll turn to many of the recipes we call “easy bakes” here at Food & Wine, like cinnamon rolls I can prep at night and bake in the morning, sugar cookies that become an afternoon decorating project with kids, pie crusts I can pull from the freezer for dessert in a flash, and hearty loaves of sourdough to slice and toast on cozy chilly mornings. It’s baking, but with enough flexibility for me to do it my way, and enjoy the season and being with the people I love for many sweet moments.