For bakers, 2-1/4 cup flour does not mean two heaping scoops of flour plus a smaller heap. It means two one-cup measures, leveled off with a knife, plus one quarter-cup measure, leveled off with a knife. There is no cutting of corners or even rounding of corners. There is only exact measurement and process precision.
For baking a batch of cookies can be like tip-toeing across a minefield. Did you add too much air to the flour? Is the butter too chilled? Are the eggs room temperature? Did you add the exact amount of baking soda? Or did you accidentally use baking powder instead? Each ingredient, measurement and step has a definite purpose and place in the overall order.
Having studied architecture in college, I’m at home among such precision. I know that each point on a paper or line on the computer must be specific and intentional; for if a structural concrete wall is poured just two degrees off 90, then lives are at stake.
Baking requires much the same calculated process, though thankfully less potential consequence. Just as architecture requires both fierce exactitude and utter elegance, baking balances the strict with the delicate. It is in this beautiful intersection that I find myself most drawn to all things confection.
The meticulousness may bring uneasiness for some, but for me it brings refreshment, stillness and joy. After a stressful day, I can step out of the world swirling around me and step into my kitchen.
It is the process of sifting the salt, baking powder and flour together; the way in which you separate the yolk from the white in the palm of your hand; the pouring of concentrated vanilla over creamed butter; the packing, with clenched fist, of brown sugar; the rolling of dough within small hands; and the sprinkling of six or seven crystals of sea salt on each before they enter the oven. These little moments in the process are when I get to stop thinking about the student loan check I need to mail in the morning and start focusing on, well, things like measuring flour.
In “Stranger Than Fiction,” one of my favorite movies of all time, Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a character who quits her studies as a Harvard Law School student to open her own bakery. She perhaps best captures why I love to bake when she says:
... I just figured if I was going to make the world a better place, I would do it with cookies.
Seeing a 4-year-old smile as he eats a ginger cookie, or watching a co-worker dive into a red-velvet whoopie pie before breakfast — these are the moments that assure me that what I make is helping others to delight in the world around them. And that is the joy that will keep me sifting, measuring, folding and sharing.