Baking
It's so nice living in a country again where they understand about home baking. Where baking powder comes in decent pots instead of puny sachets and where, when I ask for bicarb in a supermarket, I don't get sent to the section for cleaning products.
This flat came with a real oven, so I no longer have to bake my muffins in shifts in the combination microwave. The process of getting to know one's oven is of course a long one, requiring many painstaking tests on a range of baked goods
At first I thought my oven's personality was straightforward: the back half baked faster than the front half. More muffins established that this wasn't quite true, it was more like the back two-thirds baked faster than the front third. Most of the time. Then there was the heart-stopping moment when I thought that the back third of a lemon loaf, which had looked fine a minute before, had been burnt black. That loaf was meant for visitors, oh woe! I yanked open the oven door to find that it was just the oven light that made it look that way, the loaf wasn't even done yet. Do I detect a hint of sadism there? In any case, more field experiments must follow.
This flat came with a real oven, so I no longer have to bake my muffins in shifts in the combination microwave. The process of getting to know one's oven is of course a long one, requiring many painstaking tests on a range of baked goods
At first I thought my oven's personality was straightforward: the back half baked faster than the front half. More muffins established that this wasn't quite true, it was more like the back two-thirds baked faster than the front third. Most of the time. Then there was the heart-stopping moment when I thought that the back third of a lemon loaf, which had looked fine a minute before, had been burnt black. That loaf was meant for visitors, oh woe! I yanked open the oven door to find that it was just the oven light that made it look that way, the loaf wasn't even done yet. Do I detect a hint of sadism there? In any case, more field experiments must follow.