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Comment by incanus77 | Hacker News Reader

Pie is such a gift. My wife died nearly ten years ago and soon afterwards, I took up pie baking, which is something that she loved to do (I just loved to eat it — since childhood I've had a birthday pie instead of cake). I had all the stuff, after all. I got good at it and love to share them with friends at gatherings, or even just give them away entirely. Right before COVID, I did a Friday Pie Day thing where I gifted a pie to someone in town based on social media discussions. One time, someone got it for her coworkers who had just shipped a tough release.

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When everyone got into baking early covid I couldn’t understand why no one was baking anything, like, good. No pizza or pie or cake or muffins or banana bread or even a damn focaccia. The world collectively just decided the end-all be-all of baking was… sourdough.

Maybe because the large time investment and trial+error in making good dough provided something to focus on when stuck inside.

Not trying to gain weight when being stuck inside, maybe.

Sourdough is the bomb though. I agree about the lack of variety, but in its defense, sourdough starter can be used for a variety of other baked goods.

Plus bread itself is used in other recipes, like sandwiches or toasts or for mopping up sauced dishes.

Or even brew beers and meads.

With sourdough these would not be great. I did something similar with a mead and it came out like a sauerkraut wine

As others have said it’d wreck the flavour but you can go the other way and use spent grain from the mash in making bread which adds some pretty interesting texture and flavour.

Yes it's a common misconception that you can only make wide crumbed hipster crusty loaves. Those are great but if you want plain white bread, buns, croissants, etc etc it's all possible to do.

well, i love the smell of sourdough bread in the morning

smells like...victory.

Well, as a less-advanced baker, I get the most pleasure from baking bread.

Plus, I can eat it without getting fat.

I wish I eat bread without getting fat.

Bread is calorically dense on its own actually

Compare it to pie

Sourdough is fantastic, I have two loaves finishing their overnight chill in my fridge right now, will bake them after dinner.

I was baking sourdough since before the pandemic, and will continue baking in the future. It's a bit of work, but it's not too much work and the results are pretty damn fantastic.

Focaccia though, if I baked that regularly I'd have to go back on a GLP-1. Focaccia taught me to read the seals on olive oil in the supermarket and actually pick the right one for the break.

Wait, did I write this? Same, same, same.

>Focaccia taught me to read the seals on olive oil in the supermarket and actually pick the right one for the break.

Come on, you can't just drop that morsel without telling us what we should be looking for in the right olive oil for focaccia.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YCt2txu11d4

Great video that talks about selecting the olive oil for your use case and which seals aren't just self granted. I personally have been using colavita. Its fantastic.

I hate it but it's taught me that freshness actually matters. I bought some for focaccia and it was amazing. Saved it in the pantry for special occasions. Went back six months later and it had zero flavor. Just tasted like generic oil. Flat.

It ruined me.

Also if you're an engineer and like cooking, check out that guy's YouTube channel, He's very analytical in explaining cooking

I knew you were talking about Ethan before I even clicked the link. He's the GOAT.

I can't figure out what "seals" or "break" mean in this sentence. What am I missing here?

they possibly meant nutrition label and bread

They are possibly capable of answering the question themselves.

They answered before I did

Seals as in the certifications on the bottle.

Break is an autowrong. Should be bread.

A fringe benefit is the discard. We refresh ours every day 10g/10g/10g so it adds up slowly but steadily. Two great uses are waffles and pizza crust.

Waffles: https://www.seriouseats.com/bread-baking-sourdough-waffles-r...

Pizza crust: https://www.sourdoughhome.com/sourdough-pizza-made-with-disc...

Just got a loaf out of the oven. The smell, the crust, the whole feel of something very much tangible and enjoyable . I'm very much considering opening a small bakery.

I know what you mean (I also love to bake and have had the same thought). Just remember that running a bakery is more about running a business than it is baking. If you love baking and business, great! But if you just love baking, it may kill the enjoyment.

I love sourdough, have starters in the fridge but haven't baked in a while, should do it.

Problem is, for some reason it never tastes sour enough, or like the commercial sourdough. I have done slow rise in the fridge over 24+ hours etc. Made sourdough starter from scratch several times, same result.

Bread tastes good, just not sour, or rather sour enough to tell it's sourdough.

Starters are a mix of bacteria that produce either lactic acid or acetic acid. If yours is never turning out sour enough you might be: using too much commercial yeast, not using enough starter, or having a starter culture biased towards lactic acid.

The first two are easy to fix. The third one is saying you need to keep your starter culture a little bit cooler. I keep my downstairs where the starter is between 62-67 during the winter and its plenty sour. I think dryer starters might be less sour, but I'm not sure. I run mine 100% hydration.

I'm currently baking this recipe: 300g bread flour, 300g whole wheat flour, 227g starter (100%), 541g water, 18g salt, 1/8tsp of commercial yeast. All the usual baking steps, over night retard. Two loaves

For one thing, yeast was in short supply, so if you wanted to bake regularly, sourdough was a good option if you could keep it going.

It wasn't for no reason at all though. There were concerns about availability of yeast, which isn't used in sourdough. (Valid concerns or not, I have no idea.)

I do find it kind of wild how intimidating most people I know find baking. Get a food scale and follow the directions and you're good to go and will have something respectable and delicious. As with anything, you can dive deep and go extreme with it. But baking delicious food is not rocket science.

Funny you'd say that. Other people say cooking is art, while baking is a science. No room for errors.

Baking bread is fun because its not science. It had guidelines but thats it

Science can be fun!

Cooking is art, baking is a very easy science (weight things and check the temperature), pastry is another thing. That requires talent, experience and a lucky star.

if there was no room for "errors", how is it possible that there are tens of thousands of different bread and cookie recipes and stuff like that?

Because while the recipes are easy to follow, you can't fix a baked dough. If you messed up the salt, the yeast, etc. that's it. Cooking is more forgiving in that sense.

Those people are dead wrong on both counts. Cooking meals benefits more from precision than they claim (if you want reproducible results you best be measuring!), and baking does not require as much precision as they claim (I estimate ingredients all the time when baking and my bakes come out great).

There's a lot of mysticism around baking online, but in truth it's very easy. Just follow the recipe and you'll be ok. You don't need to carefully weigh ingredients and stuff like people say.

It depends, I guess. When I make pizza dough, I use around .1% yeast. Using .4g instead of .8g would make a huge difference, and getting that right without carefully weighing it is neigh impossible.

It is fun but it's also not universal. While every house and apartment I've lived in in the USA had an oven, the default in Japan is no oven. 1 to 3 burners, and possibly a broiler is the norm.

If you want an oven you get microwave/oven combo.

Might be similar in Korea? China? Taiwan? India?

Baking bread is not like that unless you have strict control of the environment; it is sensitive to temperature, and nature of the water and flour. It's an art; you have to read the signs. And mastering that is rewarding.

I baked a Napoleon cake. It was amazing, took 11 eggs and it was the one and only.

> The world collectively just decided the end-all be-all of baking was… sourdough.

I can't speak for the world, but:

1. Good bread is really hard to come by in the United States. Unless you're going to a bakery twice a week[1], or your local grocery has a contract with one [2]... Your idea of 'bread' is probably mushy garbage that I would describe as more similar to 'cake'.

2. Sourdough is relatively easy to make. Flour, salt, water, starter, time[3].

---

[1] Going anywhere to buy one item that is eaten or goes bad in three days is a big ask... Which is why this isn't a great option.

[2] The overwhelming majority don't, and when they do, they want $7 a loaf.

[3] Which a lot of people had plenty of.

Good bread is everywhere in major cities in the US. There are bakery sections at grocery stores and there are many local bakeries.

> There are bakery sections at grocery stores

There are, and most of them don't have good bread. (Baguettes are about the only good bread that you can reliably expect to find in them. Sometimes they have San Francisco-style sourdough, which in my experience, tastes like someone dumped a shot of lemon vinegar into it. Just because a bread uses sourdough starter doesn't mean it needs to taste sour. I feel much the same way about hops and beer.)

Regularly visiting the bakery is, for reasons I've mentioned, a lot of friction for one purchase.

My closest one carries... Weird specialty hipster breads (because it is more focused on tarts and pastries and sweets - bread is just an afterthought for it).

The one I'd go to, if my closest grocery weren't stocking them is way out of my way. I would not be making that trip twice a week.

> Regularly visiting the bakery is, for reasons I've mentioned, a lot of friction for one purchase.

That is still not "really hard to come by" as per your original claim. It's very common (not just in large cities!) to have a local bakery where you can get good bread. Whether you choose to go or not, it is available to you.

I mean, let’s at least discuss this in good faith.

“Good” bread according to the majority and bread that is specifically up to your standards are probably two very different things.

My grocery store’s bakery sells many types of fresh bread: sourdough, white, rye, croissants, ciabatta, buns, rolls, bagels, and so on. Many grocery stores in my city have a bakery section with a selection of fresh bread like this. (Even Walmart I think, but I don’t shop there).

It’s not the best bread I’ve ever eaten, but it’s fresh, good, tasty bread. It’s not “mushy garbage” and it’s not “cake” like you described in your original comment. It’s not “weird specialty hipster” bread. It’s just simple, real, fresh bread.

if it makes you feel better, we got into baking during covid and never baked sourdough once. we made pizza, cake, muffins, banana bread, regular bread, cornbread, etc. we just didn't post about it online ...

IMO it's because it's more challenging. I've baked everything you've listed and apart from pizza (which is also bread) it's all trivial to do. You just follow a recipe.

Bread is a totally different thing. Only four ingredients: a ground up grass seed, a mineral, a single celled fungus that lives in the dough, and water. The results range from complete disaster to the best thing you've ever eaten. It all depends on your technique.

That's why it has captivated so many and in particular men, as you can get really deep and geeky. There's only so far you can go with banana bread.

> The results range from complete disaster to the best thing you've ever eaten. It all depends on your technique.

Hear hear. I'm at a local optimum where my bread tastes good, but it's a bit crumbly. When I change anything, it's nope nope backpedal. Trying to find the next step that'll improve my home baked bread

We started doing sourdough in lockdown for 1 reason. The shops nearby were out of yeast. kinda limits your options

When I graduated from university, my dad had just died, my mom had cancer, and there was no employment for a year. I made a lot of pies and got really good at making crusts. Yep, it was always great when I brought in a real pie, homemade.

What a tough situation to be in. It sounds like you handled it well, I don't know if I would have had your strength

I'm so sorry for your loss.

What a wonderful way to keep your wife's memory alive.

Totally. I started baking pies because it was a tradition in my family and my wife can’t cook. To make sure my kids had the family food tradition I learned to bake. Once you get a system down, like anything else, it’s not that hard. Plus pie filling has time to bloom if you make it day before. Pie dough can be made ahead and freezes well. Individually these things aren’t hard or time consuming.

I started making my own simple bread and now I can’t eat store bought bread. Just takes like sawdust to me. It’s not really all that hard. Add a little rosemary and some olive oil and it’s delicious. No need to fuss over sourdough (over rated in my opinion). Over time you learn how ingredients work and what ratios work. So becomes easier and easier. I can throw together amazing corn bread and be eating it a little more than half hour later.

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