PORCH PONDERINGS

Eau du Patisserie

9. National Pastry Day
Write about an experience of eating pastries.
What did you eat, with whom, etc?

I love the Great British Baking Show. Oh my goodness the pastry and ‘bakes’ they can do. And all under a large white tent in the beautiful countryside of England. So far the most favorite thing I’ve seen baked is this wonderful cake called ‘Kek Lapis Sarawak’. It is truly a thing of beauty.

https://sarawaktourism.com/story/legendary-layer-cake-from-borneo-was-featured-o...

Someday I may try to tackle this work of art. Seems it was brought to Borneo back in the day. So here’s a challenge - find Borneo on a globe. The cake was introduced by the Dutch who settled there and baked for teatime. It shows how serious they are about their tea!

When my husband and I first got together, he told me of this German wonder called stollen. We lived near Columbus, OH. At that time there were some German bakeries in the city. He said it was a tradition to have stollen for Christmas. So we bought a stollen. We ate the entire pastry that morning. It was wonderful.

Of course, that was back before I discovered I am cursed with the dreaded ‘can’t eat anything containing wheat’ malady of gluten intolerance.

We still bake a stollen every year around Christmas. Tradition. But now my hubby is cursed with the dreaded ‘I have to eat the entire pastry’ malady.

I think baking is a lost art. No one seems to bake any more. When we were in Gardiner we started baking sour dough bread. Again, this was before the gluten problem reared its ugly head. We sent away to King Arthur flour for this sour dough starter. It is from a strain over 200 years old they said. So you get this little bottle of stuff, feed it, and keep it going with water and flour forever if you wish. We had the most amazing bread from this sour dough starter.

We made bread and waffles. I remember the wonderful sour taste. I took bread to share at the motel. I took bread to potluck at church. We loved that bread. Then one time after we moved here to Roundup somehow the starter got ruined. I’m not sure what happened but I opened the bowl to feed the mix and was greeted with this moldy, smelly mess. This starter we had lovingly catered to for over 8 years had died. So at that point we gave up the idea of baking bread. I can’t eat it anymore, and my hubby now rarely does either.

But something I do bake is cookies and quick breads and other such things. Brownies, lemon bars, banana bread , chocolate chip cookies , oatmeal cookies, gingerbread, corn bread, biscuits, and all this from scratch. Every now and again I’ll do a pie and a real layer cake . No mixes - all from recipes. Nothing like the smell of something baked to fill your house. They just cannot get that smell in an air freshener.