BBA #12 English Muffins

With the Cranberry Walnut bread out of the way, I’m enthused about the next batch of breads in the book, and today I tackled English Muffins.

English muffins are different from most other yeast breads as they are initially cooked on a griddle or other flat surface. The first part of the dough was pretty standard, then after the first rise the dough is divided and the muffins are shaped. They then rest on cornmeal for their second rise.

Cornmeal is also sprinkled over the top. After another hour of rising, the muffins are carefully lifted into the skillet. They are puffed up on top, and puff up even more.

Once they are flipped, they flatten on the second side.

I had a little trouble at this point because my “medium” heat was too hot, so the muffins were getting browned too fast to cook the middle. Next time I will definitely have a cooler griddle.

Once the griddle portion is done, the muffins go into the oven to bake for another 5-8 minutes. This is when I was really glad that I have a huge skillet that could cook all six muffins at once, because the instructions were to get the ones that were done into the oven without waiting for the others, so it could have been a bit chaotic.

As my muffins were a bit underdone due to the too-hot skillet, I baked them a couple minutes extra. When they came out, the family was hovering in the kitchen, eyes gleaming in hunger. There were loud protests when I told them that they had to cool for half an hour.

After 20 minutes I couldn’t hold them back any longer. I insisted on fork-splitting them, and then we dove in.

They were absolutely delicious. I could probably make them at least once a week and people would complain it wasn’t often enough. They rose nicely, flattened nicely, and looked like English muffins. I am very happy with this one.

Next up: focaccia!

#9 Cinnamon Raisin Bread

A couple weeks have gone by since I baked. With Ferrett out of town, it would have been rather a lot of bread for just me. Now that he was back, and we had friends coming over for dinner, bread sounded like a great deal.

Like all breads, the first few steps looked pretty much the same: flour, yeast, water, salt. As this is an enriched bread, buttermilk and an egg. Cinnamon. Knead. No reason to clog of the intarwebs with more pictures of that.

Things only got interesting when I had to add a cup and a half of raisins:

That’s a lot of raisins in a fairly small batch of dough. I used Sunkist tri-color raisins, and they were very pretty in the bread. But first I had to get them in the bread. So I started kneading.

The problem with kneading things like raisins into bread dough is that they tear up the gluten strands, which will negatively impact the rise of the dough. Therefore, it’s necessary to take a slow and patient approach to folding them in. Once the bulk of the raisins had been absorbed, about half a cup of escapees were still spread all over the counter. I began rolling the dough around like I was playing Katamari Damacy and giggling like a loon.

Once the dough was ready, the instructions were to let it rise about two hours or until doubled. The recipe also has no degassing, or punching down, phase. But I refrained from adding one and did as I was told.

“Doubled” is a little hard to eyeball at times. I understand why some people use a translucent plastic bucket with measurements: the dough goes only up, instead of outward, so it’s easier to see.

Next was forming loaves, and adding the cinnamon/sugar swirl. The recipe made two loaves, so I divided the bread and rolled each one out, then added the swirly, candy layer:

After that I rolled them as tightly as possible and put them into loaf pans to rise. Forgot to get a picture of them prior to rising, but here is one after:

Clearly, my “divide in half” skills need work.

The loaves took about 10 minutes longer than the recipe called for to get to what I considered “golden brown.”

And the real test of cinnamon bread is how little it gaps along the swirl when sliced:

Impressive looking, n’est pas? Alas, further in the loaf it was quite gappy.

So the real real test of cinnamon bread is how it tastes. And the verdict was delicious! The bread itself was tender and tasty, and deserves to be made again. Next time, however, I think I will try the Cook’s Illustrated method of braiding in the swirl. We’ll see how that goes.

BBA Challenge #8: Cinnamon Rolls or Sticky Buns

This bread had to wait until there were going to be other people in the house. Because I cannot be entrusted with such things on my own. I chose the cinnamon rolls option. And for the first time, I used my Kitchen Aid to start a dough. Yes, that’s right, I broke down and used technology. This dough started out like cookie dough, with butter and sugar being creamed, and that was something definitely best done in a mixer. Once the dough was all together and in a dough ball, though, I just couldn’t get a feel for how developed it was in the mixer, so it was back to the counter and hand-kneading. Once it rose, next was rolling it out into a rectangle:

I don’t use my rolling pin very often, but when I do, I’m quite happy that I splurged on a marble pin, because it rolls the dough out effortlessly. The recipe called for dusting the pin with flour to keep the dough from sticking, but I decided to just rub a bit of olive oil over it, and that worked perfectly:

The cinnamon.sugar mix is then to be sprinkled onto the dough. Several of the writeups I’ve seen of this bread complained that the mixture didn’t stay in the roll, or that there was too much of it. I was determined not to have this problem, and solved it in the tastiest way possible: butter.

By brushing the dough with melted butter, I was able to sprinkle the cinnamon on without having any issue with it being dry and falling out. In fact, if I make them again, I will increase the cinnamon/sugar mix–I like my cinnamon rolls to be very cinnamon-filled.

The next step is rolling up the dough and then slicing into individual rolls. The instructions in the book are a bit hazy as to the size of pan these should go in. It sounds like he’s talking about a jelly roll plan, but I could tell that would be too large, so I went to a baking pan:

Yeah, not so much. I moved them to a smaller baking pan:

They were probably a bit close together now, because they sprang nicely in the oven and crowded close together, which meant that they took an extra 10 minutes to bake. But they came out pretty:

For the glaze, the recipe called for a fondant made with milk, powdered sugar, and lemon extract. I was unimpressed with the suggestion, so I added sour cream and got rid of the lemon extract, making for a much tastier glaze.

The results were quite tasty, though not the best cinnamon rolls I’ve had. I think I would leave out the lemon flavoring in the dough if I were to make them again. The next time I make cinnamon rolls I think I will try the buttermilk biscuit recipe I made for Thanksgiving and make cinnamon rolls out it it.

BBA Bread #7: Ciabatta

The bread baking continues, this time an Italian bread that I’ve experienced in restaurants but never at home.

Ciabatta starts with a preferment, like so many other breads in this book. As always, that means that starting the day before is the better choice. Of course, I didn’t manage to do that. Still, I was able to give the preferment 5 hours to do its bubbly thing. After that, more flour, salt, and liquid is added. The recipe called for water, but the side comments said that buttermilk could be used for a more tender crumb, and since I had buttermilk available I thought, what the heck?

What results from the mixing of all the ingredients is, well, a wet, sloppy mess:

For 7 minutes or so, you mix this slop in the bowl, turning the bowl clockwise as you go along, dampening your hand to keep the dough from sticking, and then turning it counter-clockwise, all the time squishing the dough to form the gluten.

5-year-olds would love this.

You then take this wet mess, plop it onto a flour-covered counter, and engage in the “lift-and-fold” method of kneading. The idea is that dough too wet to be kneaded can be scooped, stretched, then folded in on itself. This dough was very wet, and the directions weren’t really clear enough on how many times, or for how long. So I did it for…a while? The dough rested for half an hour, then I had to do it again. And again, I wasn’t sure for how long. I think I probably should have done it for longer, in retrospect. But either way, the dough then rises on the counter, covered, for two hours.

Once it finishes rising, the dough is divided into two pieces, each of which will be a separate bread. The breads are to be set up in a couche, a cloth divider meant to hold the loaves in shape. Generally, this is done with a length of canvas impregnated with flour and used for this sole purpose.

I don’t happen to own such a length of canvas, so I had to find some other piece of smooth cloth that I could flour. The obvious choice was a pillowcase:

(Okay, for demonstration purposes I probably shouldn’t have chosen a black pillowcase.)

The dough was very sticky, so I sprinkled on lots of flour. The bread rose well, but then came the next step, which was getting the loaf onto the peel so that it could then be slipped onto the hearthstone where it would bake.

I must make a confession now: I’ve always used parchment paper on the peel and slid the whole shebang into the oven. But Reinhart makes it clear that while certain breads can be cooked with on parchment, others should not be. And ciabatta is one of the “should not be” breads. So I sprinkled the peel with cornmeal to give it a try.

This would have been easier if the loaf was a bit less like a non-Newtonian fluid. As it was, getting my hands under the loaf was like lifting a jellyfish. Not easy. Much swearing ensued. But I finally managed to get it there:

Then there was the setup for getting it into the oven:

The kettle was to fill a broiler pan with boiling water, the mister to further mist the bread in the first part of the baking. And the towel? To cover the glass door of the oven while pouring the water into the broiler. Because at 500 degrees, even tempered glass isn’t immune to cracking if water is dribbled on it.

All this, and we finally had bread:

The measure of success in ciabatta is large holes, so the proof was in the cutting:

We got some very good holes, but the crumb didn’t really taste like ciabatta — very tasty, but not quite ciabatta. But then by this morning the flavor had matured and it was very much ciabatta.Very good dipped in olive oil.

There are several variations on the ciabatta, and I will make others in the future. It’s not an easy bread, but it is very tasty.

BBA Challenge #5: Casatiello

This week’s bread was the first one with which I was completely unfamiliar. Casatiello is an Italian version of brioche. It decreases the amount of butter in the bread, but replaces it with cheese and cured meat.

How bad can that be?

For the cheese, I chose a nice aged Gouda: strong enough to carry the bread without being overpowering. For the meat, I decided against salami or sausage and decided to go with a really nice, thick cut Amish bacon.

I realized I had a problem when I pulled out the cast iron frying pan. Suddenly husband, daughter, and daughter’s girlfriend were all in the kitchen. “Bacon…?” they asked, eyes wild.

Fortunately, I’d purchased lots of bacon. So the first batch went to the ravening wolves I call family. Once they were satisfied, I was able to cook up bacon chunks–and threaten the fingers of anyone thinking about nibbling.

These were the add-ins for the bread:

Yup, that’s gonna be one healthy loaf!

When it was all kneaded together, it looked like this

After rising, the instructions were to put it in loaf pans or a brioche pan, but it was really too soft for a loaf, so I used a springform pan instead:

You can see the air pockets in the bread, which look good buy also say “no good gluten skin,” meaning that it’s not going to form up well as a loaf. Definitely well-served by the springform.

It came out of the oven very pretty:

And once it cooled, the crumb was nice:

As for the flavor, it was pronounced delicious, with the one suggestion that it needed more bacon. The book says that the “coarsely grated cheese” will result in little pockets of cheesy goodness, but I found that it melted into the bread pretty evenly. Perhaps Reinhart has a cheese grater that has even larger holes than mine. Overall, it was a favorite–and won’t appear on our table very often because of its richness!

Oh, and while all this was going on, I was also making my regular sourdough bread. Despite my attempt at making the two breads follow each other into the oven, it was clear that they were both going to be oven-ready at the same time. Once again, I got to use my lower oven. Though I thought early on that maybe it had been a silly thing to want, it’s turning out the be very handy! Both breads came out of the oven within 15 minutes of each other.

I call that a successful baking day!

BBA Challenge #4: Brioche

There is nothing nutritionally redeeming about brioche. It’s basically baked butter–a succulent slice of heart attack. But it was the next bread, so if I was going to do this right, I needed to bake brioche.

The bread once again started with a sponge, a short preferment to get the yeast beasties at work and develop some flavor. I don’t know how much flavor contribution can really be had in 20 minutes of fermentation, but I am determined to follow the directions.

Except I sort of missed the part where the dough had to chill overnight and so got up very early to start the bread and didn’t caffeinate first, and the wheels were coming off the cart pretty darned early.

I think I was still trying to get my head around the whole pound of butter that was going into the bread. And five eggs.

The second direction is to add the rest of the flour and the eggs, and then let the whole thing rest for five minutes so that the gluten can develop.  I got through the mixing, but missed the five minutes part. Instead, I started adding in the butter.

It’s a lot of butter, added one stick at a time.

I have this strange determination to do this whole challenge without using my mixer. Don’t ask me why; I’m just amused by the notion. Brioche, however, is not a bread conducive to hand kneading. In fact, it was rather like kneading a batch of cookie dough:

A very messy operation. And once I had incorporated all the butter, I was supposed to continue kneading for another 5 or so minutes before spreading it on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and putting it in the fridge.

The key phrase here is supposed to. I kind of missed that part, and when I got the dough back out it was still a slippery, formless mess.

Now, there are special brioche pans that make this bread a very special and lovely presentation, but at I am not anticipating much brioche in my future, I opted to go with loaves. The recipe said that it would make three loaves, but I only had enough dough for two, and there was no way that I could “form the loaves according to the [usual instructions].” That would require, you know, form. Which this bread was sadly lacking. I wrestled the two lumps into vaguely loaf-like shapes and smooshed them into the pans, where they were supposed to spend two hours rising.

An hour and a half later, there was no sign of any rising going on.

At this rate, there was no way that anything resembling edible bread was coming from this mess, so I figured I didn’t have anything to lose. I dumped the two loaves back out and began kneading them again. This time, miraculously, gluten did develop. I reformed the loaves and put them back in the pans and gave them another 90 minutes. They hadn’t risen much, but there was some sign of life, so I figured I didn’t have anything to lose and popped them into the preheated oven.

Astoundingly, both loaves sprang nicely in the oven, and came out looking like actual loaves of bread rather than buttery bricks.

The resulting loaf had a rather dense but very tender crumb, and was delicious.

I took a loaf to dinner at a friend’s house, and gave him the leftovers. Our loaf is slowly diminishing, but at about 500 calories a slice, slowly isn’t slowly enough. I’m thinking I should freeze it and only take it out for special occasions.

Because otherwise the special occasion will be our funerals. From the coronaries brought on by this bread!

Henny Penny and me

My problem is that I really need more people around to eat my bread.

I’ve been experimenting with the most effective approach for getting a long, flavor-building rise in my sourdough bread. I’ve tried overnighting it during its initial rise, and in its final rise.  Then on New Year’s Eve – when Ferrett sent out one set of invitations for 8pm and the other for 7pm, so I thought I had another hour before people would start showing up – I mixed up a bread but didn’t have a chance to knead it, so it went into the fridge for a 12+ hour autolyse.

It came out really tasty. Light and tender. And the oven spring was so high that it kind of ‘sploded. I’m inclined to say that it is the most successful of the methods.

But there has been nothing scientific about my approach to these breads, so I can’t be sure.

See, at this point, Shelob and I are so comfortable with each other that when I am ready to bake, or when there gets to be too much starter, I just pour some off into a mixing bowl. I eyeball how much starter is there, and add yeast, water and flour strictly according to a “that looks like enough” formula. So sometimes the dough is a little softer, sometimes it’s a little stiffer, sometimes there’s more of it, sometimes the loaf is a bit smaller.

To get a final answer, I need to take a Mythbusters approach: controlled conditions, careful measurements, and side-by-side tastings.

That’s a lot of carbs for a family of two. Who will help me eat my bread?!

BBA Challenge Bread #3: Bagels

Many moons ago, when I was a young pup of 26 or so, living in Alaska, I made bagels a few times, mostly to take on camping trips. They were whole wheat, cinnamon-raisin bagels, which we ate with peanut butter, apple slices, and cheddar cheese, an amazingly tasty lunch  that could fuel many hours of hiking or paddling.

But the bagels themselves? They were awful: sad, misshapen lumps of vaguely ring-shaped bread. They didn’t rise well, they didn’t have anything in common with any bagel you’d find in a store, and we only enjoyed them because we were engaged in activities that burned about 700 calories an hour. Anything would have tasted good.

So given my sad history with bagels – arguably the best bread of all – I was anticipating this week’s bread challenge with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. This bagel recipe was certainly more sophisticated than the one I used 25 years ago, and I wasn’t going to try it with whole wheat flour the first time out, so I figured that I had a decent shot at making a food substance that didn’t require climbing a mountain to enjoy.

The bagels in Reinhart’s book are a two-day process–something I’ve gotten quite used to in bread baking. The process was a bit different than most, though, and there was no long rise of the dough prior to shaping. I had to read the instructions several times to make certain that I actually comprehended the process.

It was also the first recipe to call for an ingredient that I would consider to be a bit “exotic” (the definition of exotic ingredient is, of course, one that you’ve never cooked with before), malt syrup. The information about the recipe conceded that a different sweetener could be substituted, but that the result would just not be quite the same. So when I saw that Earth Fare carried malt syrup, I bought some, just for bagels. We call this, “dedication.”

The recipe also suggested using special, high-gluten flour in order to get that extra-chewy bagel flavor. This I chose not to do. King Arthur’s bread flour has a relatively high gluten percentage, and Ferrett is a little hesitant to bite into really chewy bagels because of his dental work. So less-chewy was quite acceptable.

The first step for bagels is a sponge, a very wet preferment (it contained all the liquid for the recipe) that sits for a couple hours getting bubbly and yeasty. (The book mentioned that sourdough can be used for bagels, but suggested not using it the first time, so I didn’t.) I mixed up the preferment and left it to get all bubbly:

As I was also making dinner in the midst of all this, and as our house is quite cool and stuff rises at a leisurely pace, the preferment actually sat for about three hours. At that point, the instructions are to stir in the other ingredients and then knead until all the flour is incorporated and the dough is silky and smooth. I measured in additional yeast and salt, and then cracked open the barley syrup.

And wondered why, in his suggestions for alternatives, Reinhart didn’t suggest molasses. Because it looked, smelled and tasted very much like molasses. Ah, well. It will no doubt come in handy at some point….

I began stirring in the flour, and it quickly became apparent that this whole mess had to be transferred to the countertop and the kneading had to begin. It was the weirdest feeling dough I’ve ever worked with. Because of the amount of flour suspended in the sponge, it felt at first like a non-Newtonian fluid.

The sensation of handling it was both freaky and fun. Eventually it started absorbing the rest of the flour, but for a long time was strangely lumpy. After 10 minutes of kneading, though, it was quite smooth and easily workable – in fact, almost rubbery.

This was good, because the next step was to divide the dough into 4-1/2 ounce segments and round it into little balls:

I understood better why there isn’t a rising period first. The gluten was still quite flexible throughout the dough, so it was sturdy enough to be torn into little bits and then mashed back together without much resistance from the gluten skin. The balls all had to rest for about 20 minutes, to let the gluten relax, and then shaping began.

Now, the traditional way to shape bagels is to roll each ball out into a tube, wrap the tube around your hand, and then roll the two ends together. To keep with tradition, I shaped one bagel in that way;

The final result shows why this method is a pain in the butt:

Not very even. The “cheaters” method is to flatten your ball of dough, poke your thumb  through the middle, and then turn the circle in your hand until it’s the right size. That worked okay, but was kind of boring. So I developed a modification. I poked through the middle with thumb and pointer finger, then twirled the bagel on my pointer finger until it was a little bigger than the perfect size (the elasticity of the dough means there will be some bounce-back). This method was so easy, and so fun, that I called my husband into the kitchen to make some bagels with me.

Once they are formed, the trays of bagels go into the refrigerator overnight. Two large jellyroll trays of bagels. Once again, I am glad for the auxiliary fridge:

In the morning comes the boiling and baking steps. The recipe said that the raw bagels could be held for two days, so I decided to cook only one tray of them this morning. Our friend Angie is here visiting, so I took orders for what kind of bagels people wanted. I could do this because I had ordered the King Arthur Everything Bagel topping mix. Once again, I made sure everything was on hand for the next step in the process:

One giant pot of boiling water, one oven preheated to 500(!) degrees, toppings to go on the wet bagels.

When I started boiling them, I was kind of disappointed with how flat they were.

I was careful to place them back on the tray with the same side up, because the bottoms were very flat. Then after sprinkling with toppings, into the oven they went.

12 minutes later, they came back out:

I couldn’t believe how gorgeous they were! They had sprung beautifully in the oven, puffing up and browning perfectly:

Once they were marginally cooled, I sliced them and we slathered them with the cream cheese Ferrett and Angie had generously braved the snow to acquire. Ferrett was also a total sweetheart and bought my some lox (the best part is I don’t have to share them because no one else likes them!) and I spooned a few capers into my sandwich:

These bagels were delicious! We all devoured them, moaning with flavor ecstasy the entire time. Our only complaint is that we are all still too full to eat the second ones.

Okay, well maybe Ferrett had one more complaint. He gently chided me that I’ve been baking too much bread lately. We’ve had some go stale simply because we had more of it than we could eat, and he suggested that maybe I should slow down a little.

I began to get defensive about this accusation, then I glanced at the counter, and took this picture:

The bowl next to the bagels? Not some dirty dishes needing to go into the dishwasher. No, that’s a sourdough bread that I’d mixed up and was letting rest before I kneaded it. With another tray of bagels waiting in the basement, there’s a chance that Ferrett might have a bit of a point.

Because crazy isn’t enough: undertaking the BBA challenge; #1

I do love my sourdough bread, but baking it has become so simple and automatic that I feel like I’m getting rather lazy. There are many lovely, wonderful breads out there that I haven’t been learned to bake yet. But randomly baking breads didn’t seem like a practical method of building my baking skills.

I am not alone in this desire to develop and hone good bread baking skills. A whole group of bakers have undertaken a challenge to bake all the breads in Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread — and impressive and detailed book featuring 44 different breads, plus the possibility of a few adaptations. The people who first cooked up The Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge years ago have, many of them, completed all the breads and written quite entertainingly about them.

As is often the case, I’m coming quite late to the game. But a good idea is a good idea, so today is Bread One. The original idea was to bake through the book in order, one bread a week. My goal will be to finish by the end of next year. I’m getting a bit of a head start, but I’m not going to try for a new bread every single week. For one thing, some of the breads are holiday breads, so I’m going to aim to match those to feasts. For another, I can’t ignore my poor sourdough! Shelob* needs to be baked with at least every week or so. There’s only so much bread one couple can eat (though I have noticed that if people are coming over, getting through a bread is not really much of a problem).

A couple quick notes on the book. First, the breads are arranged in alphabetical order, which doesn’t really fit into the mindset of building on a set of skills, but the first third of the book is all about technique, so if you are undertaking recipes here you would be wise to read that through before getting started. Second, I will not be including recipes because, unlike a recipe here or there from an assortment of cookbooks, this would be far too many recipes taken from a single source and that’s stealing.

So here we are, on week one, Anadama bread. It’s a wheat and cornmeal bread sweetened with molasses, supposedly of New England origin. Ferrett, being from New England, immediately confirmed that he had never, in fact, heard of such a thing. Oh, well, who knows.

One of the things you quickly learn about making artisan breads is that if you get up bright and early to start them on the morning of baking day, you are quite likely already too far behind to finish them that day. Artisan breads often take at least two, and occasionally three, days of preparation. Now, this doesn’t mean that you are slaving over them for hours at a time every day, but it does mean that you had better read your recipe at least a day in advance and make sure there isn’t some kind of preferment that needs to be started the night before. In the case of Anadama bread, that initial start is to soak the cornmeal in water overnight. Easy enough!

The rest of the dough was quite straightforward the next morning, the water, yeast, and half the flour going into a sponge for an hour, then the remaining ingredients and time for kneading.

I knead all my dough by hand. Even though I am the proud owner of a Kitchen Aid mixer, I love the feel of dough and the way it changes under my hands as the gluten forms. It’s a matter of preference, but I’m a hands-on gal.

I was worried that the dough wouldn’t rise well with the cornmeal in it, but it doubled nicely on the first rising. The dividing of the dough called for two 5″x9″ pans, and stated that half the dough could be put aside in the fridge for a day or two. I baked one loaf in the 9″x5″ pan, but I think I will use a smaller 8.5″x4.5″ pan for the second as it rose pretty well on the proofing rise but didn’t really fill the pan. And I got NO oven spring on it whatsoever.

The final result:

Though the loaf tested as completely done, it fell a bit as it cooled. The crumb was pretty even:

A little dense at the bottom, but not bad.

What really matters, though, is the flavor. I was a bit skeptical going in, but I have to say that this was delicious. It would make an excellent substitute for cornbread, and was tasty enough that I could see it being served as the special bread at a nice restaurant, and if we are having company it would be fun to bake individual breads in miniature loaf pans. We had friends over this evening, and there is only about 2″ of the end of the bread left.

I’m glad there is dough for a second loaf in the fridge.

I went into this regarding Anadama bread as kind of a throw-away first loaf in the book. I figured I’d make it this once and be done with it. But as it turns out, this is an easy and delicious bread, and I will definitely be making it again. I think it might do well as a whole wheat bread, too. Bottom line is, a winner with which there will be more experimentation.

*When jumping up from bed at 11:30 at night because I realized I’d forgotten to feed the sourdough, I muttered in a Golum voice, “She needs…to feed. She’s always hungry.” And in that moment named my wonderful sourdough starter Shelob.

Living with a Small Kitchen: Food prep (gadgets)

Okay, you got the pots and pans, you got the knives, you got the small appliances. Now you gotta put stuff together. You know, actually cook stuff?

It’s kind of remarkable the number of other things you don’t need in order to put together delicious food: your stock pot and sauce pans can even double for mixing bowls.

But seriously. If you’re not in still in college or just gotten out of it, why would you live like that?

Well-made, well-fitted tools make life in the kitchen much easier and change cooking from a job to a joy. It’s possible to get by with cheap and flimsy versions of most tools, but I recommend replacing such tools with quality items when the opportunity arises.

Also, don’t buy stuff until you need it a couple times, but when you find yourself wishing you had it for the second time? BUY IT. It’s really easy to end up with a drawer full of stuff that you never use, but it’s equally frustrating to be continually makeshifting when the tool that would help you do this job quickly and easily isn’t in your arsenal.

So, where to start? How about with the most used items in my kitchen: mixing bowls.

I have a few…

This is two sets of metal mixing bowls, for a total of 8 (minus one second-to-smallest bowl that got left at my ex’s years ago), plus a set of glass bowls that go down to itty bitty. I’d been coveting those glass bowls for years and finally was given a set for my birthday this year. I was over the moon!

Now, some people might think this is a lot of mixing bowls, particularly of the metal ones – who needs two full sets? And yet I can report that today alone I used all but two of those bowls, and it wasn’t even a crazy-busy cooking day. And the nice thing about metal bowls is that they can stack well without worrying about chips and dings.

The glass bowls are exceptionally handy when setting up mise en place for a complex dish. It’s satisfying to go all Julia Child with those little bowls filled with prepared ingredients.

Who can resist a chance to play Food Network Star? Plus, it’s just doggone handy. I wouldn’t mind a second set of these bowls.

What next? Baking stuff! We’ve already covered cookie sheets (of which I now own four), and baking pans. But after that there are all the other things: cooling racks (I have three), a baking stone (I want a better one than I currently own), round cake pans (I don’t own any, but I don’t bake cakes), pie tins (I have one and never use it), springform pans (these I have, but have only used a couple times) loaf pans (I have one large, want one smaller). What you should actually own depends on what kind of baking you do. If you are a sweets fan, stock up; if not, don’t feel like you need to own these things. Remember, you can buy things as you discover you need them.

And then there’s all the tools for the alchemy of turning a pile of ingredients into a meal:

Due to the small size of my kitchen, I only have one drawer for kitchen utensils, so I keep an eye out for things that don’t get used and get them out of there. Even still, the clutter gets away from me at times and I have to sort it all out again.

Top of my list is wooden spoons. I have about half a dozen, three of which are high quality spoons I bought at Lehman’s in Amish Country. I remember as a kid my mom having one, only one, wooden spoon. I imagine she used it for cooking, but I remember it well as the source of paddlings. Mom had a lot of large, long-handled metal spoons that we used for most the cooking, and they were the source of many finger burns. I use practically no metal tools in cooking these days, and they are bad for cast iron surfaces and for the few nonstick items I have around. So the wooden spoons are wonderful for protecting cooking surfaces and being poor heat conductors.

Spatulas, ladles, serving spoons, have two or three of each around so that you don’t have to be continually running to the sink to rinse things off. I use nylon ones, preferring the OXO Good Grips brand as quality without the runaway price. There are some silicon ones out there, but they feel kind of…bendy to me, and I don’t trust them. Remember, though, that you can easily melt these in a very hot pan, so be careful with them.

You can only see one whisk in the drawer, but I actually have three: one large metal one, one large silicon one and the small silicon one in the picture. I have the silicon ones for use in my nonstick pressure cooker when thickening sauces. When I was a kid, whisks were only of the potato-masher variety, and I remember thinking that whisks were rather exotic things until I bought one. Now I wouldn’t live without one (okay, I would, but I wouldn’t be as happy). Also, tongs. If you grill meats, you should know never to turn them by stabbing them, which lets the juices run out. Tongs. Use them.

I also have two silicon basting brushes, and do a great job. I probably don’t need two, but they came as a package and are too shiny to just get rid of.

Those are the things in pretty much every kitchen. Let me point out a few that are a little more unusual. At the bottom right of the photo is a dough scraper, with a pastry blender lying on top of it. If you do any baking, I recommend both. The pastry blender makes easy work of cutting cold butter into flour for pie crusts. They come in two varieties, one like I have with wires from handle to handle, and one that has solid metal on the sides and blades just at the bottom. I prefer the latter, and don’t much like the one I now own as it feels flimsier and fussier to me (it does the job, though, so I keep it).

You use the dough scraper to do just what it says: scrape dough back together. It’s a godsend when working with sticky doughs. At the end of the baking process, you can also use it to scrape up stubborn leftover bits of dough from the counter. Care is required, though, to use the blade quite flat in order to avoid damage to countertops.

The bright yellow gadget is a lemon juicer, and I looked askance at Ferrett when he purchased it, but I’m a convert now. Fast and efficient juicing. To its right is a weird triangle thing with a round white label. It’s a jar opener. Not necessary, but handy.

At the bottom left of the picture are both a meat thermometer and a candy thermometer. Just get them. You will be grateful to have them at a moment when acquiring them would mean disaster.

What you don’t see in the drawer are measuring spoons and cups. My measuring spoons hang on a ring off the side of the fridge so they are at hand at all times. Measuring cups are tucked in another drawer. I have a set of dry ones, and two glass liquid ones, one 2-cup and one 4-cup. Two different sizes are handy to have around.

There are a couple other things that I recommend for any kitchen. First, these fabulous bowls that are available at World Market:

They are pasta-style bowls, wide and shallow, and about the circumference of a large salad plate at the lip. Not only are they great for eating out of, they are the best shape ever for dredging and coating foods with flour or breadcrumbs. I use them all the time.

Second is something I found at Costco. In the automotive section. A couple years ago I bought a package of white terrycloth auto-detailing towels like these, except it was a package of 40. They have been the handiest things ever. With these puppies around, you never are without a towel, and you’re never tempted to rinse out that towel you used to wipe up raw chicken and risk contaminating other foods. We use them as a substitute for napkins daily, saving paper waste. And spills? No worries! There are always plenty of towels available for sopping things up.

Third is parchment paper. OMG, parchment paper! This silicon-coated update of waxed paper is heatproof and keeps everything from sticking. I can’t believe it took me years to get around to buying a roll of this wonder, and I can’t believe it took me this long.

Finally, if you have stainless steel, you will thank me for turning you on to this:

My lovely All-Clad pan was coated with brown spatter stains that seemed to be permanently bonded to the pan. I was quite frustrated with the situation, and tried many solutions. Then I saw this wonder being touted by another stainless steel owner. It’s amazing stuff! I’ve seen the regular cleanser in grocery stores, but the stainless steel one is a little harder to find. I’ve seen it at Bed Bath & Beyond, and of course amazon.

That pretty much finishes up my kitchen. I’m sure others have different absolute musts, but this is what gets me through the meals I make.