okay, after listening to the podcast, I hate it even more! Bread baking at home is self-indulgent?!
I think his stance on whether people should bake bread at home at is either nothing more than a contrarian pose or crankiness over hypothetical lost income. There are countless human endeavors that are done both by professionals and amateurs alike, and there's nothing special about bread baking that sets it off from any other practice. Why cook anything at home at all, when there are restaurants all around with professionals who can supposedly do it better?
Also also: it sounds like he thinks people shouldn't grow their own vegetables at home because there are farmers?
I'm just annoyed that he thinks you can't have one thing without the other. You can grow vegetables and support farmers, you can bake bread at home and support local bakeries, you can cook dinner and still support restaurants. And you can celebrate and promote the joys of cooking *with* bread without needing to shit on those who love to bake it.
I'd have promoted this book on my platform, but not now. If I give it any airtime, it will only be to point out how its author thinks home bakers are self-indulgent fools.
100% understand this response. It’s a strong stance that I think is useful rhetorically to redirect conversations but could certainly be more realistic about the reasons and reality around people baking bread at home. I’ve found, for instance, I don’t want to make pizza at home... it doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea for everyone!
Working in a bakery, some of the most fun conversations all of us working there have with customers revolve around the bread or pastries that *they* bake at home, or when we give them some of our sourdough starter to use in their own kitchens, or when we can talk flour types with them. It’s a testament to the fact that most home bakers aren’t baking at home for purely individualist reasons--they’re seeking community in doing that, too, and able to find that support in local bakeries
I have no data to back this up, but I bet many home bakers are *more* willing to patronize local bakeries and to spend the money they require, since they appreciate the labor and expense that go into a great loaf.
I also think, apropos my update, it would be fruitful for you to respond to in your newsletter to the book and why it doesn't work for you. I want to read that!
Andrew, I actually would love to hear a conversation with the two of you, live. He's really coming at this from decades of being a home baker before he opened a bakery. And he's not much of a fighter, or name-caller, or my-way-or-the-highway kind of person -- in short: I think the conversation would go more smoothly than one might think based on the comments.
As I updated in the post and explained in comments, this was a breath of fresh air to me and my circumstances. I was hoping others might feel the same—if not, oh well!
I think this probably tracks (anecdotally, it’s how I treated bakeries as a home baker, before I started working in one), and it aligns with points Alicia made about people maybe making one or two kinds of bread at home, but going to a local bakery for something that’s more difficult to create in a home kitchen (baguettes, perhaps a type of bread special to a bakery)
A very important material condition to baking bread! This has me thinking to a recent essay in Vittles about the elitism of the cottagecore lifestyle. As with many things done at home, a holier-than-thou perspective or tone can easily come across, when not everyone has the material resources or the time/energy to engage in such tasks!
I like this book, but I gotta say I was annoyed by the intro, particularly the section discouraging people from making bread at home. (I mean, OF COURSE I would be annoyed by it.)
Yeah, we should all patronize our local bakeries, but not everyone has a good one nearby and not everyone can afford good bakery prices. And there's no need to make home bread baking seem harder or more expensive than it is ("like riding a bike on bent rims"? what?) to justify a pro-bakery stance. It's a minor thing, but I feel like the editor of this book should have excised that section. (Especially because the book DOES include recipes for breads from scratch.)
Yes, I think there has to be room for both but I also (of course) love someone taking a strict, seemingly eccentric stance as a jumping-off point. We also talked about it in the audio, that they didn’t want any bread baking recipes, but their hand was forced.
that makes more sense. but it's still weird! Bread baking is a *joy* for most bakers and it usually makes them want to encourage others to do join in. Maybe he's been doing it professionally too long and has lost his own passion for the practice. Home bakers don't have the stress and long/early hours that pros do, so it's usually *more* fun for them.
That’s why I think this book is for people who don’t get joy out of baking bread at home but still love good bread--it really made me personally feel seen in terms of how I’ve found a happy place in not baking bread myself (especially as someone in a volatile hot climate, with a small kitchen, and tons of good bakery options). There’s space for everyone! But I do think this was misunderstood or feared by editorial.
That is something I can get behind! Bakers need customers/fans to eat their breads. If everyone made their own, I’d probably off myself given the thrill i get sharing my creations with others
haha wading into this controversial book over a year late! i found the take about home baking being "incredibly stupid" "bizarrely self-indulgent" "insane" what did i miss... to be beyond patronizing and insulting to home cooks, and i don't think it's necessary for professionals to go there to make their point and prove their relevance... but they often do!
i think most home cooks can relate to cooking/baking not simply being something they love or hate but there being a tension, and i think that anyone trying to sway us one way is selling something. i'm cooking and baking for my birthday party this weekend, prepping all week because extremely self-indulgent leo, but there is that tension of what to outsource... one of the three vegan cakes from a favorite local baker, the vegan cheese board picked out by a friend at the coop (rather than a ton of spreads)... and on the fence about flatbread, because i don't know if it will be the best use of my time, but i would like to serve people wonky breads from my hands along with the perhaps wonky cakes. (if this guy has no appreciation for a friend's wonky food, i can only pity him.)
i do think there is something undeniable in there about which foods according to our time/place/psychology/fads are the ones that we will have a tension around, maybe guilt or shame, over buying them. still obviously selling something if someone claims to have the answer for you!
I listened to this audio, and I heard Mr Easton say that baking bread is self-indulgent. Well, in addition to baking bread every weekend, I am an artist, and you might say that making art is self-indulgent, but where would we be without art? My bread is better than any I have tasted from anywhere. I give it away, mostly to colleagues (I am a high school teacher) and it is very well received. I wish I could bake 1 loaf at a time, for me, but that is not practical, so I share the love with the people I work with. I like making bread. That's enough for me to keep doing it. I don't need someone to tell me that it is self-indulgent. What isn't? Mr Easton disdains putting recipes in his book, but he does it anyway. What could be more self-indulgent?
Well, publishing doesn’t really allow authors much control in the end--especially in cookbooks. Marketing chose the name of my forthcoming book, not me!
I enjoy Easton’s perspective for being strong-willed and provocative. I don’t think baking or art-making are self-indulgent pursuits.
I loved this, loved that he broached the subject, and I think I get at least some of their argument. Any community is going to be immeasurably richer for having a bakery. In my 3,000 person very remote community, we are extremely fortunate to have an excellent bakery and a baker who has spent years building and sharing his expertise with primarily pastries and brioche, and secondarily ciabattas, baguettes, and a solid lunch menu. A recent interest in learning to make croissants (self-indulgent, I think) should not deter my support. It raises a question for me though: If his business was reduced to reliance on baking sourdough bread, should I all but abandon my decades long practice of baking nearly all our bread? I tend to think yes. Our tourism-based community would be immeasurably poorer if he wasn't successful.
For all their various benefits, I think avocational pursuits -- hobbies -- are rather self-indulgent, even when they satisfy a need and are congruent with the social and physical environment, even when they fall within the available budget and time. Is it self-indulgent to be intellectually curious, to develop new non-vital skills that make life richer, and even get finicky (or maybe overly precious) about ingredients and tools? I think so. But self-indulgence isn't bad per se... unless sackcloth and ashes is the aspirational standard. But just as I have an impact those around me, I want to support those whose work or practice nurture the broader community. Based on what I heard in the interview, I think that's what he was trying to say.
I really, really appreciate this perspective! I think that is what he was trying to say, and also what I was trying to say—that self-indulgence isn't bad, so long as it's not in the way of serving and being part of one's community. For me, baking bread would be self-indulgent in a bad way, just me pursuing something that doesn't fit my life or desires for the sake of my professional ego.
Hmm. This piece was a joy to read, I love that you shared my childhood revulsion at white bread. I’m sorry to say I truly don’t have time to listen to the podcast (I need to search for an app that transcribes podcasts so I can speed read them I guess), but I’m incredibly perplexed at the idea that people shouldn’t make their own bread. As other commenters have said, there is room to both support local bakeries and make your own bread, and furthermore the “local” bakery I would like to patronize is one I would need to drive to, and I avoid driving as much as possible (see, concerns about wildfire smoke and Sahara dust...), not to mention, like many people, I do have a budget and making my own bread is less than half the price? Oh well. Guess I better go look for that transcribing app because this stance just makes no sense to me!
People shouldn’t not make bread! But I think what the book is responding to is a push to always make one’s own bread, if that makes sense, and that losing the local bakery is a tragedy. I don’t even have a car, so our bread isn’t accessed that way. It just isn’t something that makes sense for me, and I found joy in a cookbook saying it’s fine, even preferred.
That makes sense. You always do such a great job of explaining things Alicia! Maybe the true problem is these sweeping declarations that one thing or another is the “correct” thing to do (come to think of it my brother and I were actually discussing this very thing this morning).
Just here to celebrate "garlic is one of the most abused ingredients in restaurants." I'm kind of allergic, so I'm biased, but that made me so happy! I'm here for more subtle use of garlic and even for opting to not have it in some dishes.
I just have to listen to the podcast now. My morning assignment.
And about this -- ‘They don’t want you to make the bread yourself. In fact, they discourage you! They say find a local bakery making bread you like and support them.’
I LOVE baking my own bread. Feeding the starter. Making the dough. Watching over the oven. It is all one of the most enjoyable things in my life - even soothing, when I desperately need it lol.
But: I also love our local bakeries! Down in the hi-desert, where we live right now, we are blessed with two. And I want to give them both a big shout out.
One is Wild Bread, a ‘cottage bakery’/pop up -- started by Lara and Lis three years ago - in Pioneertown (a small village built about 15 minutes away from our canyon that was originally built in 1946 as a set for western movies - really, it’s true!). Even when I’m baking every week we still get our ‘Dez Sez’ loaf from Wild Bread and a couple cinnamon buns and a brioche (our order for tomorrow, actually) because it’s all so good and we love Lara and Lis. (Once a month maybe they also do bagels, and then - thank God! - we don’t have to get up before dawn and schlep all the way to Palm Springs just for a bagel fix.)
The other local bakery is Luna Bakery, who actually have a shop in Yucca Valley, only 40 minutes away. All their bread is made with their sourdough starter, by hand in small batches from scratch. And their stuff is also so good. So so good. No bagels, but scones, tarts, cookies, cakes... yeah, so good.
Anyway, you can see we end up eating a LOT of bread and other baked stuff.
These sound fantastic!!! I think it’s great to bake and support local, of course. I want to know what you make of Rick when you listen! He’s a character!
Home baking is self indulgent! My sourdough baking love is so bad-American! OMFG
But I definitely understand Rick’s argument. And I think the book with Melissa sounds as you say: quite refreshing, and passionately opinionated.
I am thinking this second thing is also like me - Marilyn says yes, and not with much enthusiasm - but maybe that’s why I like Rick (can’t be TOO hardline, as with the cheese pizza, don’t want kids crying lol)
Absolutely: local bakeries, how cities and community should work - he’s so right (and then also you could stop wasting your time with your sourdough, bc look, we’re not out on the prairie, raising & killing our own chickens like on the frontier - this all had me smiling, even giggling) And then the garlic thing - restaurants with flowers place on your paste with tweezers (oh yes), and horrifying garlic excess - laughing now
Really, by the end I wished I could have been there for your conversation! And could eat at Rick’s place.
okay, after listening to the podcast, I hate it even more! Bread baking at home is self-indulgent?!
I think his stance on whether people should bake bread at home at is either nothing more than a contrarian pose or crankiness over hypothetical lost income. There are countless human endeavors that are done both by professionals and amateurs alike, and there's nothing special about bread baking that sets it off from any other practice. Why cook anything at home at all, when there are restaurants all around with professionals who can supposedly do it better?
Also also: it sounds like he thinks people shouldn't grow their own vegetables at home because there are farmers?
I'm just annoyed that he thinks you can't have one thing without the other. You can grow vegetables and support farmers, you can bake bread at home and support local bakeries, you can cook dinner and still support restaurants. And you can celebrate and promote the joys of cooking *with* bread without needing to shit on those who love to bake it.
I'd have promoted this book on my platform, but not now. If I give it any airtime, it will only be to point out how its author thinks home bakers are self-indulgent fools.
100% understand this response. It’s a strong stance that I think is useful rhetorically to redirect conversations but could certainly be more realistic about the reasons and reality around people baking bread at home. I’ve found, for instance, I don’t want to make pizza at home... it doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea for everyone!
Working in a bakery, some of the most fun conversations all of us working there have with customers revolve around the bread or pastries that *they* bake at home, or when we give them some of our sourdough starter to use in their own kitchens, or when we can talk flour types with them. It’s a testament to the fact that most home bakers aren’t baking at home for purely individualist reasons--they’re seeking community in doing that, too, and able to find that support in local bakeries
I have no data to back this up, but I bet many home bakers are *more* willing to patronize local bakeries and to spend the money they require, since they appreciate the labor and expense that go into a great loaf.
I also think, apropos my update, it would be fruitful for you to respond to in your newsletter to the book and why it doesn't work for you. I want to read that!
On it now, actually!
Andrew, I actually would love to hear a conversation with the two of you, live. He's really coming at this from decades of being a home baker before he opened a bakery. And he's not much of a fighter, or name-caller, or my-way-or-the-highway kind of person -- in short: I think the conversation would go more smoothly than one might think based on the comments.
As I updated in the post and explained in comments, this was a breath of fresh air to me and my circumstances. I was hoping others might feel the same—if not, oh well!
I think this probably tracks (anecdotally, it’s how I treated bakeries as a home baker, before I started working in one), and it aligns with points Alicia made about people maybe making one or two kinds of bread at home, but going to a local bakery for something that’s more difficult to create in a home kitchen (baguettes, perhaps a type of bread special to a bakery)
I also live in a place where most people don’t have ovens, making local bakers even more significant. As said, food is contextual!
A very important material condition to baking bread! This has me thinking to a recent essay in Vittles about the elitism of the cottagecore lifestyle. As with many things done at home, a holier-than-thou perspective or tone can easily come across, when not everyone has the material resources or the time/energy to engage in such tasks!
I like this book, but I gotta say I was annoyed by the intro, particularly the section discouraging people from making bread at home. (I mean, OF COURSE I would be annoyed by it.)
Yeah, we should all patronize our local bakeries, but not everyone has a good one nearby and not everyone can afford good bakery prices. And there's no need to make home bread baking seem harder or more expensive than it is ("like riding a bike on bent rims"? what?) to justify a pro-bakery stance. It's a minor thing, but I feel like the editor of this book should have excised that section. (Especially because the book DOES include recipes for breads from scratch.)
We wanted to NOT include recipes for baking bread but our publisher wouldn't allow it.
I was hoping you’d comment! 😂
Yes, I think there has to be room for both but I also (of course) love someone taking a strict, seemingly eccentric stance as a jumping-off point. We also talked about it in the audio, that they didn’t want any bread baking recipes, but their hand was forced.
that makes more sense. but it's still weird! Bread baking is a *joy* for most bakers and it usually makes them want to encourage others to do join in. Maybe he's been doing it professionally too long and has lost his own passion for the practice. Home bakers don't have the stress and long/early hours that pros do, so it's usually *more* fun for them.
That’s why I think this book is for people who don’t get joy out of baking bread at home but still love good bread--it really made me personally feel seen in terms of how I’ve found a happy place in not baking bread myself (especially as someone in a volatile hot climate, with a small kitchen, and tons of good bakery options). There’s space for everyone! But I do think this was misunderstood or feared by editorial.
That is something I can get behind! Bakers need customers/fans to eat their breads. If everyone made their own, I’d probably off myself given the thrill i get sharing my creations with others
haha wading into this controversial book over a year late! i found the take about home baking being "incredibly stupid" "bizarrely self-indulgent" "insane" what did i miss... to be beyond patronizing and insulting to home cooks, and i don't think it's necessary for professionals to go there to make their point and prove their relevance... but they often do!
i think most home cooks can relate to cooking/baking not simply being something they love or hate but there being a tension, and i think that anyone trying to sway us one way is selling something. i'm cooking and baking for my birthday party this weekend, prepping all week because extremely self-indulgent leo, but there is that tension of what to outsource... one of the three vegan cakes from a favorite local baker, the vegan cheese board picked out by a friend at the coop (rather than a ton of spreads)... and on the fence about flatbread, because i don't know if it will be the best use of my time, but i would like to serve people wonky breads from my hands along with the perhaps wonky cakes. (if this guy has no appreciation for a friend's wonky food, i can only pity him.)
i do think there is something undeniable in there about which foods according to our time/place/psychology/fads are the ones that we will have a tension around, maybe guilt or shame, over buying them. still obviously selling something if someone claims to have the answer for you!
I listened to this audio, and I heard Mr Easton say that baking bread is self-indulgent. Well, in addition to baking bread every weekend, I am an artist, and you might say that making art is self-indulgent, but where would we be without art? My bread is better than any I have tasted from anywhere. I give it away, mostly to colleagues (I am a high school teacher) and it is very well received. I wish I could bake 1 loaf at a time, for me, but that is not practical, so I share the love with the people I work with. I like making bread. That's enough for me to keep doing it. I don't need someone to tell me that it is self-indulgent. What isn't? Mr Easton disdains putting recipes in his book, but he does it anyway. What could be more self-indulgent?
Well, publishing doesn’t really allow authors much control in the end--especially in cookbooks. Marketing chose the name of my forthcoming book, not me!
I enjoy Easton’s perspective for being strong-willed and provocative. I don’t think baking or art-making are self-indulgent pursuits.
I loved this, loved that he broached the subject, and I think I get at least some of their argument. Any community is going to be immeasurably richer for having a bakery. In my 3,000 person very remote community, we are extremely fortunate to have an excellent bakery and a baker who has spent years building and sharing his expertise with primarily pastries and brioche, and secondarily ciabattas, baguettes, and a solid lunch menu. A recent interest in learning to make croissants (self-indulgent, I think) should not deter my support. It raises a question for me though: If his business was reduced to reliance on baking sourdough bread, should I all but abandon my decades long practice of baking nearly all our bread? I tend to think yes. Our tourism-based community would be immeasurably poorer if he wasn't successful.
For all their various benefits, I think avocational pursuits -- hobbies -- are rather self-indulgent, even when they satisfy a need and are congruent with the social and physical environment, even when they fall within the available budget and time. Is it self-indulgent to be intellectually curious, to develop new non-vital skills that make life richer, and even get finicky (or maybe overly precious) about ingredients and tools? I think so. But self-indulgence isn't bad per se... unless sackcloth and ashes is the aspirational standard. But just as I have an impact those around me, I want to support those whose work or practice nurture the broader community. Based on what I heard in the interview, I think that's what he was trying to say.
I really, really appreciate this perspective! I think that is what he was trying to say, and also what I was trying to say—that self-indulgence isn't bad, so long as it's not in the way of serving and being part of one's community. For me, baking bread would be self-indulgent in a bad way, just me pursuing something that doesn't fit my life or desires for the sake of my professional ego.
Thanks so much for this.
Hmm. This piece was a joy to read, I love that you shared my childhood revulsion at white bread. I’m sorry to say I truly don’t have time to listen to the podcast (I need to search for an app that transcribes podcasts so I can speed read them I guess), but I’m incredibly perplexed at the idea that people shouldn’t make their own bread. As other commenters have said, there is room to both support local bakeries and make your own bread, and furthermore the “local” bakery I would like to patronize is one I would need to drive to, and I avoid driving as much as possible (see, concerns about wildfire smoke and Sahara dust...), not to mention, like many people, I do have a budget and making my own bread is less than half the price? Oh well. Guess I better go look for that transcribing app because this stance just makes no sense to me!
People shouldn’t not make bread! But I think what the book is responding to is a push to always make one’s own bread, if that makes sense, and that losing the local bakery is a tragedy. I don’t even have a car, so our bread isn’t accessed that way. It just isn’t something that makes sense for me, and I found joy in a cookbook saying it’s fine, even preferred.
That makes sense. You always do such a great job of explaining things Alicia! Maybe the true problem is these sweeping declarations that one thing or another is the “correct” thing to do (come to think of it my brother and I were actually discussing this very thing this morning).
Just here to celebrate "garlic is one of the most abused ingredients in restaurants." I'm kind of allergic, so I'm biased, but that made me so happy! I'm here for more subtle use of garlic and even for opting to not have it in some dishes.
I am guilty of using a LOT of garlic but this honestly made me rethink where that desire comes from!
I just have to listen to the podcast now. My morning assignment.
And about this -- ‘They don’t want you to make the bread yourself. In fact, they discourage you! They say find a local bakery making bread you like and support them.’
I LOVE baking my own bread. Feeding the starter. Making the dough. Watching over the oven. It is all one of the most enjoyable things in my life - even soothing, when I desperately need it lol.
But: I also love our local bakeries! Down in the hi-desert, where we live right now, we are blessed with two. And I want to give them both a big shout out.
One is Wild Bread, a ‘cottage bakery’/pop up -- started by Lara and Lis three years ago - in Pioneertown (a small village built about 15 minutes away from our canyon that was originally built in 1946 as a set for western movies - really, it’s true!). Even when I’m baking every week we still get our ‘Dez Sez’ loaf from Wild Bread and a couple cinnamon buns and a brioche (our order for tomorrow, actually) because it’s all so good and we love Lara and Lis. (Once a month maybe they also do bagels, and then - thank God! - we don’t have to get up before dawn and schlep all the way to Palm Springs just for a bagel fix.)
The other local bakery is Luna Bakery, who actually have a shop in Yucca Valley, only 40 minutes away. All their bread is made with their sourdough starter, by hand in small batches from scratch. And their stuff is also so good. So so good. No bagels, but scones, tarts, cookies, cakes... yeah, so good.
Anyway, you can see we end up eating a LOT of bread and other baked stuff.
And so really, you can have it both ways!
These sound fantastic!!! I think it’s great to bake and support local, of course. I want to know what you make of Rick when you listen! He’s a character!
Oh, forgot: appreciated the Duncan Sheik ref and link - had a Sheik thing going for some time, I did
Ok, the podcast was a real blast!
Home baking is self indulgent! My sourdough baking love is so bad-American! OMFG
But I definitely understand Rick’s argument. And I think the book with Melissa sounds as you say: quite refreshing, and passionately opinionated.
I am thinking this second thing is also like me - Marilyn says yes, and not with much enthusiasm - but maybe that’s why I like Rick (can’t be TOO hardline, as with the cheese pizza, don’t want kids crying lol)
Absolutely: local bakeries, how cities and community should work - he’s so right (and then also you could stop wasting your time with your sourdough, bc look, we’re not out on the prairie, raising & killing our own chickens like on the frontier - this all had me smiling, even giggling) And then the garlic thing - restaurants with flowers place on your paste with tweezers (oh yes), and horrifying garlic excess - laughing now
Really, by the end I wished I could have been there for your conversation! And could eat at Rick’s place.
Thanks so much for this generous and open-hearted listening! I am so glad you can appreciate Rick’s perspective.
Been listening to Duncan Sheik all morning!
I was hoping I would get someone on board! 😂
Excited that my library has ordered this book. I've placed a hold on it and look forward to reading the book as soon as it arrives.