About Me

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Two mixers. One small counter. No peace.

I'm a Houston home baker with a real job, a thermostat set to 68°F, and two machines that cannot stand each other.

In the Swedish corner: the Ankarsrum

Engineered over decades by serious people who assumed it would be operated by someone with a single qualification. It met me. It has not recovered.

The Ank does everything. Brioche, cinnamon rolls, buttercream, meringue, whipped cream in its own separate bowl like it's above sharing. It will take on 300 grams of flour without complaint and consider the matter beneath discussion. Its position is that versatility is character, and that a machine that can only do one thing is not a machine but a hobby.

In the other corner: the Halo Pro

A spiral mixer that handles bread dough the way a heavyweight handles a screen door. Pizza, sourdough, focaccia, ciabatta, bagels: anything with gluten worth developing and a grudge worth holding.

It will not get out of bed for less than 750 grams. It considers meringue a rumor. Its position is that doing one thing perfectly is the entire point, and that anything willing to whip cream has already made too many compromises to be taken seriously.

Where it gets ugly:

Between roughly one and five kilos, either of them can do the job. This is the disputed territory. This is where I have to choose, in front of both of them, and live with it.

The loser sits there. Silently. Clean. Radiating.

The 68-degree problem:

Every recipe ever written assumes a 75-degree kitchen. Mine is 68, because I live in Houston and I am not negotiating with the thermostat for anyone, including yeast.

So the numbers in cookbooks don't apply here. "Rise until doubled, about an hour" means two, sometimes closer to three. Dough that should be alive is instead thinking about it. I've learned to stop reading the clock and start reading the dough. Poke it, watch the edges, judge the jiggle. The clock is describing somebody else's kitchen.

Everything on this site is timed for a cold one. If your kitchen runs warm, you'll get there sooner. Lucky you.

Shaping: an ongoing incident

I can mix. I can ferment. I can wait, which took longer to learn than either.

Shaping is where it falls apart.

There's a moment where the dough is supposed to go taut under my hands and instead it goes slack, or sticks, or tears, or does all three in a sequence that suggests coordination. I have produced loaves shaped like a comma. I have produced loaves shaped like an apology. One batard came out so lopsided it baked leaning, which I choose to read as ambition.

It is getting better. Not good. Better. The batards have corners now, which is not what corners are for, but it's a direction. Every so often one comes out of the oven looking like a person made it on purpose, and I stand there like I've solved something.

I'll keep posting them either way. The ugly ones taste the same, and pretending otherwise would make the rest of this page a lie.

The part where it's my fault.

Here's the thing neither machine will admit and both of them know: they're both right, and they both perform flawlessly every time, which narrows the list of suspects to one.

The oven lies about its temperature to my face. But the mixers are fine. The mixers have never been the problem. I remain, by a wide margin, the least reliable appliance in this kitchen, and the only one that requires coffee.

What actually gets made:

Yeasted breads from everywhere: Mexican conchas and tortas, Spanish rolls, Turkish griddle flatbreads, mantou, soft enriched things I have no business attempting at 11 p.m. on a work night. Some come out beautifully. Some come out. A few stay in the oven out of spite.

About the recipes:

Filed under Crimes, With Measurements. A joke about the tone, a promise about the numbers.

Nothing goes up until it works twice. Every formula here has been baked, ruined, adjusted, and re-baked until it makes the same loaf on purpose instead of by accident: at this temperature, at this hour, on whichever machine won that particular argument. Each recipe says which one it was. 

They both check.

The jokes are free. The recipes are earned.

Stick around. Bring butter.