Scratch History

Let’s take a trip back to 1910.  Most dessert recipes were passed down, but there were also baking cookbooks available.  Gold Medal Flour Cookbook, introduced in 1910, was just one of the staple cookbooks available.  Looking through the cookbook, you get an immediate sense of the time it was written in.  The table of measurements were in another language; a speck (teaspoon), gill (cup), wine glass.  Most recipes in the book such as, Apple Pie, Pound Cake, and Cream Puffs, are familiar to many home bakers today.  There are a few that are more unknown; Soft Jumbles, Plunkets, and Quisset Cake.  Quisset cake is a basic chocolate cake made with butter, sugar, and egg whites, made into narrow loaves and frosted with icing while warm.  According to the directions it is better after the third day.  All can be made from scratch with common ingredients most aspiring bakers have on hand.

            In my household, most of my mom’s desserts came from magazines she picked up at the grocery store.  I can remember standing in line, impatiently waiting to go home while she was leafing through Taste of Home or Family Circle; all packed with baking tips, tricks, and recipes.  Magazines were especially useful during the holidays when sugar cookies plastered on the covers, arming home bakers with recipes for the holiday season.   Digging through cookbooks at home, I came across Better Homes and Gardens 100’s of Baking Ideas, issue 1977.  “Bake like an expert with convenient mixes”, perfect for the home baker.  By creaming together sugar and butter, adding eggs, vanilla, flour, salt, and baking soda you have basic cookie dough.  From that you can add oatmeal, chopped nuts, flaky coconut, or chocolate to make it more than a basic cookie.

 

            Julia Child is among many of the household names when it comes to cooking.  She brought French cooking to America and made it accessible to home cooks.  Baking with Julia was both a series and book in 1996.  Episodes, which still air on PBS, featured various pastries chef who demonstrated skills and techniques that can be done by home bakers.  Julia Child was an avid teacher, sharing her knowledge of baking with people who wanted to learn scratch baking instead of buying boxed mixes.  Making fresh whole-wheat bread, muffins, and cakes are just a few of the recipes Julia taught home bakers. Baking with Julia taught home bakers how to make crispy, sweet, Italian pizzelles, as well as soft French beignets, tuile cookies, and fruit crostatas.

            All of these “historical” sources are relevant to modern baking times.  Gold Medal flour has a website with recipes for Blueberry Coffee Cake or Almond Thumbprint Cookies, all available with the click of a mouse.  Better Homes and Gardens, as well as other food magazines, still publish recipes for the home baker.  Other food magazines, such as Bon Appétit, Food and Wine, and Gourmet, are still around for home baker to use for inspiration both in print and online.  There are even hundreds of blogs with scratch baking as their focus: My Baking Addiction, The Busty Baker, and Bakers Royale.  The Internet is the number one source for scratch baking recipes.  It does not get much easier than going to Google and typing, “chocolate cake recipe”, to find 66 million different choices.