It's All About the Food

It's all about the marketing

Whenever I see one of those top-ten, must-have lists, I first check whether the publisher has an affiliate deal to sell those items, then I check to see who's advertising that month.

This one from Chow.com is particularly irksome. The title is "Essentials for the Home Baker: Baking supplies that won't collect dust" which should be the titles of two different articles: one for what you really do need, the other unnecessary but extremely useful tools. Let's rebut, shall we?

Stand mixer: This line sums it up: "many professional chefs prefer the durable, though expensive, Hobart." Professional chefs need a stand mixer. My mother's stand mixer collected dust for decades, in preference to the quick to grab, easy to clean hand-held. Is a mixer essential for baking? Yes, unless you want or have the arms of a stevedore, but a hand-held is just as effective.

Non-stick mats: Essential? No. Useful and a better value for frequent bakers? Yes. A good value for the new baker? No; buy a roll of parchment paper instead.

Digital scale: Why? Did the country finally convert to metric? If you are baking from a professional cookbook (or like to do math in your head), sure, but if you are baking from The Joy of Cooking, stick with your measuring cups and spoons.

Grater/zester: Darn useful. So many recipes call for some sort of citrus zest, and a zester is very, very handy. A box grater will also zest, but its difficult to get all the zest out of the holes. I'll give them this one.

Pastry bag: "Handy for piping meringue, icing, and pate a choux ..." Handy is not the same as essential. I've decorated wedding cakes without a pastry bag (hello fresh flowers!), used spoons to form meringue cookies, and would rather buy an eclair than make one.

Candy thermometer: Essential only for frying or making candy. If you use an electric skillet to heat the oil for frying, not essential even then. If you don't deep-fry or make candy, well ...

French rolling pin: A rolling pin without handles, which is also my preference, but generations of woman baked just fine with American-style pins. The rolling pin is necessary, but the style just isn't.

Kitchen timer: This is a given. The digital version shown isn't necessary though.

Stick blender: "Use it for fruit sorbets, sauces, and soups." What part of that list is baking? This is just plain wrong.

Kitchen blowtorch: Are you making creme brulee? Do you have a broiler? How about a torch from Home Depot? Then you can fix that leaky pipe, too.

"We don't mean to imply that these items are all you'll ever need. In fact, we might add a pastry scraper, a set of prep bowls, and round cutters (for cookies, biscuits, and plating)." All those items are too inexpensive and plain to be on this list.

This is a list for, to be blunt, poseurs. The people in high school who told you your favorite bands aren't really punk, or hip-hop, or whatever. People too busy talking about whatever it was to actually do it. These people discovered cooking and baking, and are dead set on having the correct, professional-quality accessories.

Me? I'm going to bake the cake layers of a strawberry shortcake. Maybe I'll whisk the egg whites by hand.