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How Do You Start Baking?
Erin Jeanne McDowell • 2023-12-05
Dylan Carnahan:Welcome to the Simple Questions Podcast. This is your host, Dylan Carnahan. The question for this episode is, how do you start baking? You will learn in this episode, beginner-friendly recipes, how to choose ingredients, and advice for aspiring bakers. Our guest is the author of The Book On Pie, which is a New York Times bestseller. The host of Bake It Up a Notch, on Food 52, and a baking coach on The Big Nailed It Baking Challenge. I introduce to you, Erin Jeanne McDowell. For me personally, relatively unfamiliar with baking. You know, my mom wasn't a big baker. The only thing we really did bake was pizza rolls. And you know, we would go into Walmart and maybe pick up, you know, apple pie there. That was kind of the baking I was accustomed to. And then I kind of got some exposure once I got to middle school. We kind of had a culinary class and we did some actual baking there. And I'd love to say that the story went on further and that I, you know, started baking and all sorts of fun stuff like that, but I didn't. And in fact, baking recently came up on my radar once I had a coworker actually talk about their experiences baking and that kind of rejuvenated my interest in baking. So that's kind of my sparse minimal exposures. So Erin, would you care to share how you first got exposed to baking?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:Absolutely. So I've been baking for most of my life and it was more like one of those light bulb moments of figuring out that that could be a career rather than kind of the other way around. I was baking cookies with my mom at a really young age. My mother is an incredible cook and baker. Cookies were the main thing that we did together. We would do pretty elaborate gingerbread houses every year around the holiday season. And then when I was a teenager, I started baking a lot more with my grandma. And my grandma lived in, well, actually outside of Overbrook, Kansas, which is a very small little town. For those of you who don't know, it's town slogan is Don't Overlook Overbrook. So that gives you a sense of how the Overbrookians feel about their little location on this fine planet of ours. But I would go out to my grandma's house outside of Overbrook and we would bake together. She liked to bake bread together because otherwise she would eat the entire loaf herself. So if I came, at least there was somebody to share the bread with. And then it sort of evolved into baking other things. And one time in particular, I came out to bake with her and she was baking a pie. And we had no idea on that fateful day. I was around 14 years old. We baked a pie together. And I don't think either of us knew that we were changing the entire course of my life that day, but we were. The pie was not good is the moral of the story. It was quite bad in fact. And that caused us to want to bake a pie again the next week and do better. And so that was really how it began for me. By the time I was 16, I had a job in a bakery in Lawrence. And shortly after I graduated high school, I headed off to the Culinary Institute of America to study baking and pastry arts. And it has been the same ever since. So I definitely fell in love with baking at a really young age. And then when I realized that that is something I could do, I have three older brothers and two of them are artists. And when I was growing up, I think I really wanted to be like my artist older brothers, but I couldn't figure out what my art form was. So when baking kind of fell into my lap in that way, it was like, oh my gosh, it's been here this entire time. And I had no idea. So it really, for me, the pieces really fell into place like that. And I've been very lucky to be doing my favorite thing in the entire world ever since.
Dylan Carnahan:Wow, there's a couple of things I wanna pull out there. First of which, Erin, you are not the first guest to say that I didn't really know that that was a profession. So I go back, I think of Alexis Dupree, who is a stop motion animator, who's done great work on shows such as Robot Chicken. And she talked about this similar thing. I didn't know that you could do something like this. So I wanna applaud you, just as I did her for the bravery, right? To find something you're passionate about. And not only just know you're passionate about it, but have the bravery to kind of step forward and kind of pursue that. Because it takes guts, it takes...
Erin Jeanne McDowell:Oh, well, thank you. And I also just always feel lucky that I figured it out at a young age, because I think that that's what is so true. It's not true for so many people. We often assume that the things that we're interested in when we're young, or we're kind of even told by people that they will change and we're encouraged to change. But I always felt like if I can just start doing this now, I've got a head start on what I love doing.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, you got to find the shoe that fits, right? You had some exposure to your older siblings. You know, what is it that works for me, right? And you're trying to fit that, and then you found something. So, I mean, that's awesome to hear. And just another kind of testament, the fact that, you know, pursue what you enjoy. Now, okay, so things have changed since we were just, you know, grandma was like, hey, you know, I don't want to eat this whole bread by myself. You know, maybe come over a couple bad pies here and there. But I'm kind of curious. So, you know, you started out kind of, you mentioned, you know, cookies and bread. Can you recommend some beginner-friendly recipes for someone new to baking, right? I'm on Gina's pizza rolls right now. You know, how do we, where do we go from there, Erin?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:Definitely. I mean, actually, some of the easiest things to learn to make are the same that I started out with. You know, cookies are a really great place to start. It's, they're easy to accomplish. You can go with the recipe on the back of the bag of chocolate chips if you want. You know, there's not a lot of loss there. And it really is a great way to learn some of the basics of baking. Because I think what scares some people about baking, cooking is a little bit more off the cuff, right? You know, you can add a little bit of this and a little bit of that and you can make it how you like it. And when you take those chances in baking without understanding the rules, it can be a little bit scarier. And that science of it is what scares people. But even a simple recipe like cookies is a great introduction to things like baking temperature. You know, sometimes they ask you, a recipe will ask you to rotate the baking sheets on the rack. That's just understanding, you know, even circulation in the oven. So even a really simple recipe can be a great way to kind of get, I always say baking is about muscle memory. And you'll never get that muscle memory unless you do it a few times, the same way that the first time any of us shoots a basketball, we likely don't make it into the hoop. So, you know, failure is sometimes a part of that game a little bit. And actually, since you like pizza rolls, what I will tell you is pizza dough, homemade pizza dough is a really easy recipe to start with. It really impresses people that you made something with yeast, but it's actually so easy. It's super flexible. You can leave it in the fridge for several days at a time until you're ready to use it. So I kind of encourage people that if it scares you, that isn't really a good reason to not give it a try. You know, look for things that are inexpensive so that if you have a start, you know, you don't wanna necessarily be throwing away, you know, if you burn cookies or something, you don't wanna be throwing away those, that chocolate, that butter. But you know, pizza dough is really just flour, water and yeast. And so there's not a lot of loss there even if you did make a mistake. So that's kind of a good place to start is just pick something that you really like to eat and always just read the recipe all the way through before you start. It sounds so silly, but a lot of people don't and then they get to step three and they realize they didn't do something and that just can ruin the experience for them.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, well said, you really do, you have to be action oriented because you need those repetitions in order to get that muscle memory or intuition to feel your way through. You gotta sit down with grandma and make some bad pies.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:Exactly, exactly. You know, the old adage like you have to put in your 10,000 hours to be an expert. It's like a lot of people make one pie every year at Thanksgiving and then they wonder why every year it's not getting better. You know, and it's sort of like, well, I understand that and I understand that frustration of, especially, I think so many people don't think of food as an art form the way that I do. They think of it as a means to an end. I need to eat, so I'm gonna make something that I need to eat. And that can be frustrating if you put in that time and then you end up with, you don't end up with a delicious result. Like I understand why that can frustrate people, but you learn a lot more from your mistakes in the kitchen than you do from your successes. Like when something turns out perfectly, you're sometimes like, I mean, the recipe told me to do this, but how did I get there? But when you make a mistake, that usually gets kind of ingrained in you and you don't typically make the same mistake again.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, it is a skillset, right? I think when there's kind of some instant gratification because we wanna eat, right? But it is in fact a skillset. And I know in baseball, we had a saying that, practice gets the team better. So that means you're gonna have to practice on your own outside of that. So outside of that one, you know, pastry or whatever you make for that holiday, right? You need to put in some repetitions outside of that because as you're saying, like, you're gonna come back next year and be a little rusty and probably have the same result or something similar. So you had mentioned, you know, there's a little nuance being that there's more science, I guess, involved in the baking experience. Can you discuss how you handle challenges or unexpected issues in the baking process?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:You know, nowadays, there are less unexpected issues. I've been baking for long enough that, you know, baking is based on ratios. And even a lot of cooking is based on ratios. My husband is also a professional cook and he, you know, he'll, if I say something to him, like I need a certain sauce, he'll say, well, how many quarts do you need? You know, he's just like thinking of how much he needs to do. And, and baking is definitely that way. So I understand the ratios inherently for certain types of cake and certain types of textures, certain types of end results. So it's, it's pretty rare that something happens where I'm kind of like, what is that? But I am such a science nerd. So I love getting to the bottom of these things. And, and for me, understanding the science of baking has been what has enabled me to make it a lot more fun because since I understand the science, I can get a lot more creative with the end result because I understand how to add flavor without necessarily changing the ratio. So a silly example is maybe you want something to taste like strawberries, but if you put fresh strawberries into a number of recipes, it would completely change the amount of liquid. It would change the texture, all of these things. So there's a product that's available in a lot of grocery stores nowadays. They're like crispy, they're freeze dried strawberries, and they sell them usually over in the produce aisle. You know, they also sell freeze dried bananas and different things. Well, since they're freeze dried, they have no moisture content, but it tastes like pure strawberries. So I can throw those in the food processor, grind them up, throw them into a cookie recipe, and suddenly have a beautiful pink cookie that tastes like strawberry, but I didn't really change the ratio or the texture at all. So for me, understanding the science has really been a means to an end. Like, I just wanted to have more fun with it. And so you don't always, you know, hear somebody saying that, like, I had to learn the science so I could play around. But in this case, it definitely has enabled me to do that, where I can kind of take risks and change the color, change the flavor, change so many things about it without the fact that it's a sugar cookie or it's a slice of pound cake, kind of keeping that initial integrity there.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, mastering the basics allows you to, again, experiment because you're not having to worry about all of these, you know, basic issues. You're not encountering that, right? You have a base level proficiency that allows you to do a lot of interesting things. You know, you brought up ingredients. How do you choose high quality ingredients for your recipes? You know, are we just going into Walmart? We're going to the freeze-dried section? We go, oh my goodness, we got bananas right here. Or is there something crazy going on behind the scenes that we're not aware of?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:So obviously fresh ingredients, it's right there in the name. Whenever I can, I love to go to a farmer's market or my parents are actually incredible. Not this time of year, but you know, in the growing months, they have a huge incredible garden filled with edible delicious things. So the fresher you can get certain things like eggs, getting them from a farm versus the grocery store. That is so wonderful. And anybody who loves to cook and bake can have an appreciation for that. But also, if I'm being truthful, the amount that I cook and bake, you know, I am just going to the grocery store a lot of the times. And a lot of times, I don't have a specific list when I go into the grocery store. I think that's one thing that surprises people. Because I do want to see what's good. And I want to see what's new and what they have that they don't normally have. You know, it's silly, but like it's an exciting day for me. I love cranberries. And so, of course, people think of cranberries as being a fall or around Thanksgiving thing. Well, they start showing up in grocery stores in September. And for me, I would eat cranberries all year round. So in September, when they show up, I get so excited and I make like a bunch of cranberry things because they are here. So that seasonality definitely kind of drives me when it comes to freshness and wanting certain ingredients. But also, like a lot of baking, it's shelf stable things. You know, I have yogurt in my fridge. I have flour in the pantry. I have that sugar. So sometimes I think it's less about finding the perfect thing or the exact right thing and finding what works well for you. One of the stories I always tell is that my mom uses a brand of flour called Hudson Cream Flour, which is milled in Kansas, and because it's milled in Kansas and it's sold in the local grocery stores, it is less expensive than a lot of the other big brand name flours that you will see in the grocery store, just because it literally has less of a footprint to get onto the shelves in the store. And if my own mother is not going to change the brand of flour she is using based on my recommendation, I can imagine that very few people are going to, they're going to use what they have. So I think sometimes if you really love a product or if that product regularly goes on sale, if you have a family of eight and you are all about that bottom line budget, you know, get the ingredients that work for you. It doesn't have to be the finest chocolate to be a great chocolate chip cookie. You know, it can still be a great chocolate chip cookie with whatever was on sale at the grocery store that week, especially if you put in the most important ingredient, which is a love.
Dylan Carnahan:That's right. I mean, when you think about when you think about advising people, right, you have to give them something that's actionable, right? So, if you tailor it and you came out and you said this specific brand, well, if they're not going to use it, then where we go from there?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:Exactly. That's like teaching people. That's been one of the hardest parts for me about recipe writing is even ovens are so different. So, I can test a recipe really accurately in my oven. I can have somebody cross-test it in a different oven. I can do the due diligence to make sure that it is working in a lot of different environments. But at a certain point, I still can't predict if your oven happens to be 50 degrees too hot or all of these different things. So what I try to do is lean more on things like visual cues. So you know, really telling you what it should look like and feel like at different stages. Because that way, if I tell you that the dough should look smooth and after four minutes in your mixer, it isn't smooth yet, that's usually a good indication then, okay, I need to keep mixing it. And then hopefully, that's like a little bit of hand holding that can make those unexpected things a little less scary. So I always say you can tell a good recipe by the amount of those visual cues they have. If they just say mix until combined, eight minutes, you know, that's not that's not a great recipe. It should be like mix until the batter is a craggy mass or, you know, I mean, like it should have some details of what it should look like to get you there. And since I'm able to use video and visuals a lot in my work, that makes it a lot easier to kind of get on people's level no matter where I'm meeting them. You know, we can we can show an example. And that usually is sometimes the thing. There's so many people who learn visually. So it's really wonderful to be able to step kind of beyond just writing an instruction and be able to say, now let me show you.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, and they're not only does that take into account the variability, right? Because again, you don't necessarily know what everyone's running with, right? When they're when they're baking. But you also have a deeper understanding because there's an understanding there that you're getting. Whereas just being told, OK, just do this, right? So higher success rate as well as the transferability of that skill set to say a different recipe or something like that.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:Completely. I always say a lot of recipes tell you how to do something, but I want to tell you why you're doing it because it's one thing to say mix to combine. It's another thing to say mix until it looks like this. And we've built enough structure. And now we know it's right. You know what I mean? Like there is a difference. So that's kind of what what I'm trying to do, because I do think that if you understand why it's going on, you don't necessarily have to know that the gluten needs 25 minutes to relax in order for you to maintain maximum elasticity. You know, it's not like that. It's just like I need to put it in the fridge now. Otherwise, it's not going to roll out. You know, I mean, there's a way to to give people that information that isn't necessarily like you need to have a science degree to interpret this. But also that you're not just saying, oh, it says to fridge it for 30 minutes, but I don't have time, so I'm not going to.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, no, that's that's true. There is a fine line right between just indoctrinating someone with all this information. And I think, you know, as I've gotten older, too, I think I've learned to discern between knowing and understanding. I mean, goodness, definitely no matter what it is. I know how the Wi-Fi works. I don't understand. Right.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:You know, I know I need to love that example in particular. It's like I work with technology all the time and I am so not tech savvy. So like I understand that to my parents, I am using all of these, you know, tech things, but I could not tell you how any of them work. It's like I know which button to press and then I get the results. And if I don't get the result, then I am calling tech support.
Dylan Carnahan:Exactly. I know we we talked a little bit about, you know, we name dropped oven, but are there any specific tools or equipment you consider essential for baking success?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:I think a really good sharp knife for anything you want to do in the kitchen, whether it's baking or cooking, you know, and one that feels good to you. You know, don't just order something online. Go to a store where you can hold it in your hands. In Kansas City, there's no better store than Prides, which is an incredible kitchen supply store that I may have kind of considered when I was choosing my location in Kansas City. Proximity to Prides was high on the list of things, which was something maybe the real estate agent had not heard before. I think hand tools in general, really good silicone spatulas. My favorite are from a brand called Gear, G-I-R, get it right, is what that stands for. They're all one piece of silicone, so they don't like come apart. Sometimes the head of the spatula comes off, and that's just like a place for gunk and batter and stuff to get in. So really good spatulas like that, a good whisk, those kinds of things are really helpful. I love a stand mixer, an electric stand mixer, but that can be a big investment for people. There is one hand mixer, it comes from Braun that I really like, and it's very inexpensive in the scheme of things. For somebody who's just getting started out, it's a really great thing, it fits in a drawer. If you live in an apartment and you don't have tons of counter space, that Braun hand mixer is the way to go. It's one of the only ones I've seen that comes with different attachments just like a stand mixer does. It can be that good waypoint as you're making investments. When I first got started after pastry school, I moved into an apartment and I had one bowl and one fork. I started a blog because I was like, I'm going to show people what I can make with one bowl and one fork. The first post, I made gnocchi because I was like, I can shape the gnocchi using the fork, then I can use the fork to eat the gnocchi and blah, blah, blah. As I collected equipment, I would share reviews and different things like that. That blog doesn't exist anymore, of course, but I guess I just mean to say people can get really intimidated by having the right tools. I just encourage you to see what feels good to you. Just because it was a $40 whisk does not mean that in your hand, it will feel good. I remember in pastry school, they gave us all a standard set of equipment and the knives, I found very clunky. I had a hard time using them and I thought, man, I'm really bad at knife skills. I'm horrible at this. Well, eventually I got a slightly smaller knife and I was just like, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. I had no problems after that. So really feeling what feels good to you, there's a couple of things like that, a whisk, a spatula that you can't live without, a couple of good sets of mixing bowls is kind of nice. But you can do a lot with a little, especially when you're just getting started out. So you don't need every single beautiful thing you see in Prides to become a great cooker baker, even though it's nice to have some of those things.
Dylan Carnahan:It's great to hear that you don't necessarily need a ton of equipment to indulge in baking and I think there is certainly too. I don't care what hobby it is. Naturally, if you've been doing a hobby for a while, you slowly accumulate more and more, and as you had displayed with your blog, that's how just over time, and then that maybe changes your preferences on what to bake. Maybe you start baking different things and you grow your skill set and what you want to participate in.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:Exactly. If you love making cookies, then maybe you want to spend a little bit of money on getting some different cookie cutter shapes. But if you don't really like doing that, then you don't really need cookie cutters. The more you do it, the more you're going to be like, man, I'd really like to have a nice sifter. I'm tired of doing this in a bowl or something. Stuff like that.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. It fits your needs, right? You run into some stuff then I can alleviate. I can reduce my time. I don't have to put up with this. I'll go ahead. I'll spend the 20 bucks or whatever the case may be. Can you share your favorite baking techniques or tips?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:I mean, one of my favorite things is I make a lot of pie dough, obviously. Some people don't realize that the technique that you use for pie dough is also the same mixing technique that you would use for biscuits or scones. Biscuits and scones are a little less intimidating than pie. Also, around here, a lot of people like biscuits. Biscuits and gravy, it's on every menu of anywhere that serves breakfast. So that's a great place to dip your toe in. You say, okay, I'd like to get better at pie. Well, maybe consider getting better at that mixing method by making some biscuits, which is a lot easier. The same can be true of other things. There are delicious cake recipes that don't even require cutting into layers, that more elaborate thing, but you can just make the cake in a sheet pan, in even a skillet, and not even have a frosting. There's taking those little baby steps. One tip that I always give this time of year that I think is really helpful, if you live anywhere cold, like it's so cold in Kansas City already, if you have a microwave and you forget to leave butter at room temperature, you can just put a stick of butter, cold butter into the microwave for 10 seconds, and then rotate it to one of its other sides and do it for five seconds more, and it'll be perfectly room temperature and soft. A lot of times this time of year, people are always like, I forgot to leave the butter at room temperature. Now, I cannot bake. It's like, no, you can still bake Christmas cookies. Just enlist the help of the microwave and you'll be there in just a few moments. There are so many little tips and tricks like that. I think also if anyone is interested in dipping their toe in baking, you should definitely check out my web series, which is available to stream for free on YouTube. It's called Bake It Up a Notch. And there are like over 70 highly bingeable episodes where we take deep dives into all different kinds of baking techniques. So if you want to learn more about frosting, there's a whole episode just about frosting. If you want to learn about biscuits or any of these things, there's whole episodes devoted to that. So you can get a little bit of insider info of like, is that something I want to try before you even get started?
Dylan Carnahan:What a great couple of tips there. What I'm getting is if someone's over here saying, I don't have room temperature butter, that either they're bluffing you or they don't know the tip. I don't know. You may have to press them a little bit.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:Yeah.
Dylan Carnahan:You have 15 seconds.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:Come on, now. And I mean, it happens to me all the time that there are those little things that you learn, you know, that you could even argue are like the hacky type things. I don't always love that word hack because it sometimes implies a simplified way of doing things. But I think sometimes it's also just like, this is what professional bakers know that you don't know. And I'm not afraid to tell you the ones that could still apply to you in your home kitchen kind of a thing.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. So, you know, we live in the, you know, digital age, right? We got all sorts of stuff coming at us. We got a fantastic web series on YouTube. We got all sorts of things we can look at. How do you stay updated on the latest developments in the baking industry?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:You know, like a lot of things, I really enjoy seeing what other people are doing, but I also think that monitoring too closely what other people are doing can actually sometimes impede your own creativity a little bit, especially in the era of social media. I struggle with this a lot because I use social media very much in my career to promote my work, but I have the same struggles as everybody else. You know, it's not necessarily always great for my mental health. Social media definitely puts you in a place where you're comparing yourself to other people all the time. And so while social media itself is a great tool to see what other people are doing, and I certainly like to stay up to date on things, I think actually the biggest things to do is I love to read books when they come out. I'm very lucky I get sent a lot of cookbooks, so I have that advantage. But a lot of people don't realize that your local library is a great source for checking out cookbooks too. Obviously I'm a cookbook author. I would really like people to buy cookbooks. But I also recognize that there's only so much room on your shelf, and not every book is for every person, just the same way not every novel is for every person. So check out a book from your local library and try a recipe or flip through it and see if you like it. And then if you like it, maybe you decide it does deserve a place on your shelf. And I think seeing what people are doing in the written form, magazines, books, if you have some favorite blogs and things like that for inspiration. I mean, honestly, nowadays, even social media sites like Pinterest are an incredible source of information and inspiration. But the longer I've been doing this, the more I find that just chatting with people who are doing this is very inspirational, because I can hear things that they've learned without necessarily absorbing their work directly, which can sometimes, like I said, clog the creativity. I also just find things like travel, when I'm fortunate enough to do it, walks, being outside, things that have absolutely nothing to do with baking are some of the things that help me the most with continuing to move my career forward. So I don't know, it's like a tricky question, because obviously I absorb a ton of information about baking. But the longer I do this, the more I find that I've learned a lot, and I always think there's more to learn. So it's not about saying I'm not going to do any more research or I'm not going to learn any more information, but it is also about I think sometimes it's like I've got a lot of information. Now let's let that percolate for a little while and see what I do with it, what my brain naturally does with it, rather than seeing what everybody else is doing with it.
Dylan Carnahan:Absolutely. And that kind of goes back to something we talked about earlier about being action oriented. Sometimes it helps to just fail and mess around. And it can be helpful to simply focus on your own journey. You don't always have to look across the other lanes in the starting line and say, hey, what are they going on, right? Sometimes you got to sit down and do things yourself. And as you said, there is so much information out here to let that kind of percolate and see what you can do with that.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:100%. And I think sometimes learning something new sometimes inspire me to think outside the box in a really delightful way. So again, it's not about not learning new information, but it's also like, okay, I've always been following this same mixing method, and I just learned about a new mixing method. Okay, what does that allow me to do? Like, how can I push that, do something kind of crazy with it? Especially early on in my career, I felt one of the only ways that I would get noticed or get published was by having really unique creative ideas. And I also felt like perhaps one of the keys was going to be the quantity of those ideas because, you know, they're not all going to stick. So if I have 20 really crazy ideas instead of just two really crazy ideas, maybe one of them is going to be more likely to stick. I've now entered a new era where, like, I just sort of like to, like, really think about what I'm going to do for a while before doing it. I have been thinking about my gingerbread house for this year since January, and I kid you not. And I am so ready to get that out and start doing it. But in the past, I have a feeling that what I would have done is I would have been like, I have five ideas, and I'm going to do all of them. You know, I just want to make all of these things, and then you want to do so much. And sometimes I find now that it's better to, like, just give yourself the space and the time to have one really great idea, however crazy it may be.
Dylan Carnahan:That's great advice. I know, yeah, you know, you tend to shoot as many shots as you can from as many angles and see what sticks, right? That is kind of an appealing shotgun strategy, so to speak, right? Yeah, no, speaking of advice, right, you've come a long way. What advice do you have for someone aspiring to become a skilled baker?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:One of the biggest pieces of advice I have is that there's so much information available, you know, for free. There's so much, obviously, I make a web series that's totally free that I'm encouraging people to watch and learn from, that some of those things weren't available when I was learning, and so I went to pastry school, and it's wonderful to go to a school and be able to, like, immerse yourself. In some ways, there's really no replacement for that, because you learn from many different skilled instructors who've kind of been there and done their own unique, creative things. But what I really encourage people now is whatever level you're interested in, even if you're just interested in, like, man, I'd really like to make my kids' birthday cakes every year and have them be, like, really cool and amazing. You know, or whether you're saying, I'm kind of interested in working in a bakery or in a restaurant or whatever, whatever the skill level is, there's so much information out there that you can kind of check it out and give it a try without necessarily having to change the entire course of your life. And certainly here, close to home, Johnson County Community College has a really incredible culinary program. And I don't know if everybody knows that, but it's really, really highly ranked and it's a really nice facility. And so for anybody who's truly looking to pursue that, that lives in this area, that's also a great place to start. You don't necessarily have to pick up and move your entire life to get some skills from some professionals. So I think I'm a notebook person and a note-taking person. And my usual advice to everybody is to write everything down. And that can be a little bit of an overwhelming advice because especially when you're getting started, you're like, what's everything? What's worth it to write down? But one example, you know, so say it's the holiday season and you try a new recipe and it's okay, but, you know, you had some failures or something. Write down what it was that gave you trouble because even if you don't make it until next year, if you have that little notebook in the kitchen and then you think, man, the last time I made roast beef, I overdid it a little bit. Let me see what this says. You're not going to remember a year later, but you remember in that moment. And, of course, organizing those notes and keeping track of them and knowing where everything is, that's a different story. But I'm such a, I have gone back to so many things. I have this stack of notebooks and I can go back. They're dated and, you know, the year is on there. I can go back and there's some really incredible resources that I've provided for myself in there. So that's my number one piece of advice is no matter what you're interested in, what you're doing, what you're trying to start for the very first time, when you're trying something new, write things down.
Dylan Carnahan:No, that's great advice. Documentation is important, right? Even as small as, like you said, I ran into this problem when trying to bake this or cook this, whatever the case may be. That documentation, that's a little node that you can revisit and that's not wasted, right? Because your memory, things atrophy, you forget, your skill set, all that stuff. So any level of documentation that you can have and access, being important to, right?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:Yes, yes.
Dylan Carnahan:Is good.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:Yes, and I mean, I think it's also, it's silly things, but you may try a, like, I get a lot of people, since I'm a pie baker, I get a lot of people saying, my family grows insert fruit here. And because they're growing this delicious fruit themselves, it's way juicier than most things that you would get in the grocery store. So a lot of the recipes that are being written are being tested with grocery store stuff. So people were saying to me, man, every time I make this blackberry pie recipe with our blackberries, it's just liquid. And it's like, well, now I can actually help you with that. And I can tell you, you need to adjust the recipe because you have superior berries. But those are the kinds of things that you can write down for yourself and say, man, I tried this recipe and it's turning out the same way every single time. I think it's our fruit. You know, I think we need to kind of... And that's also, a lot of people don't realize that's how you write recipes. You know, eventually that becomes the family blackberry pie recipe because you changed it, you tweaked it, you made it your own. And that's, you know, I always say that my sort of goal in teaching people about this, I find a lot of joy in the kitchen, and I just want other people to find that joy too. I want them to have it be a fun thing, possibly a meditative thing, which it often is for me. And if you have fear about anything, if you're unsure, it becomes a lot harder to enjoy it at that level. So my only goal here is I feel like my grandma and I started this like train of sweetness. You know, she, my mom and my grandma taught me how to bake, and then they put me on this train. And now I'm just trying to see how many people will join the train. And that maybe for somebody who doesn't have the luck and benefit of having a mom and a grandma who bake very well, well, maybe you can become that person in your family that teaches other people a new skill and shares this very practical art form that, you know, it's very rare that you produce art of any sort and then fully consume it. You know, you don't make a painting and then destroy the painting. You know, you hang the painting on the wall. So that's one of the things that I really love about this is that your failures are short-lasting too. You know, like, we can just move on to the next success because it's a practical form. You know, we're gonna literally consume it. And I just think there's something kind of special about that.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that is such... That's an awesome perspective. That is an awesome... You know, that's a deeper perspective. I appreciate you sharing that. You mentioned kind of your specialty, Bailey. You kind of alluded to it. Do you have a signature dish or specialty that you're known for?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:I mean, anything pie, anything wrapped in a flaky crust, that is fully what I'm known for. In fact, sometimes I will be walking down the street and someone will literally yell, pie lady. And I will respond to that. I know who they're talking to. I love pie. I love it because it is different than a lot of baked goods. It's more adaptable. It still follows rules. But pie is a little bit more like cooking than it is like baking, if that makes sense. Like you can play around with the fillings and a little bit easier than you can, you know, play around with a bread recipe or a cake recipe. I also like that pie is such a celebration of different textures. So it's like the filling is a different texture than the crust and all of these things. And it can go sweet or savory. I'm big into savory baked goods. That my most recent book is called Savory Baking. It came out last fall. So for anybody who really likes to cook and doesn't like to bake as much, that book is a really fun place to start because it sort of is the intersection of where cooking and baking meet. Meet M-E-E-T, but also meet M-E-A-T because there's a lot of meat in that book. And there's also a lot of vegetarian possibilities in that book too. But it's a really fun place for somebody who kind of enjoys both of those things. And maybe to dip your toe into baking if you do like to cook because it's a little bit more free flowing. But I would say pie all the way. And it's funny because pie is really what got me started in baking. And it's become my specialty. Just in the room that I'm sitting in right now, I can count about 20 different pies, you know, things on the wall. And like I have pins that are pies. Pie is pretty much a big part of my life. And I love all baking. But pie definitely has that special place in my heart. My second book is called The Book On Pie. And I always wanted to be able to say I wrote the book on pie.
Dylan Carnahan:There you go. That's a good little added information too about kind of the versatility of pies, right? I think to the uninitiated, they may have a very specific image of like a cherry pie or something like that. So to broaden that understanding, you know, that's really interesting to hear. Now, I guess to put it bluntly, you know, you're the pie lady. How can people learn more about you and the work you do?
Erin Jeanne McDowell:Well, definitely check me out on social media. You can find me on Instagram at emcdowell, on TikTok at erinjmcdowell. You can also go to my website, erinjeanmcdowell.com. Jean is spelled J-E-A-N-N-E, and that was actually my grandma's name. It's also my middle name. I use my full name and all my work for that reason, because she's the reason I started baking pies. So we got to give a little homage to grandma all the way down this delicious journey. On my website, you can find a lot of linked recipes that are available for free online. You can find links to all my different videos that are available for free online. You can find information about all three of my cookbooks, and you can also find information about other places to watch me, like his The Season for Binge-Watching. So please check me out as a baking coach on The Big Nailed It Baking Challenge on Netflix. That was a really fun thing because we got to take a bunch of people who aren't really bakers and teach them skills one by one. So for anyone out there who's not sure they can do it, in episode one, they're literally frosting cakes with their hands, and by episode ten, they are making these incredible show pieces. So the proof is in the pudding, so to speak. So yeah, there's lots of great delicious places to find me all over the internet. Just Google my name, or my grandma's name, as it were.
Dylan Carnahan:Erin, you have an awesome, candid persona. Thank you so much for sharing your time and knowledge today.
Erin Jeanne McDowell:Thanks so much for having me. This was so much fun.
Dylan Carnahan:That wraps up our conversation with Erin. We talked about baking techniques, handling unexpected issues, and how to stay up to date on the latest baking trends. Go to this episode's show notes to see any resources Erin mentioned during our episode. And lastly, subscribe to the Simple Questions Podcast to get notified when our latest episodes are released. Thank you for listening, and remember to keep asking questions.