WHAT IS PASTRYOLOGY?

Here's the thing about this blog: I'm not a trained baker. I'm a surprisingly well-versed self-educated baker (surprising to me, that is). I don't work in a fancy urban patisserie, although I'd love to someday. I bake in a retirement home, 25 hours a week. And I thought that anybody who's passionate about baking at home might be interested to read my journey of the little discoveries I make every week as I learn how to bake commercially.

That's what PASTRYOLOGY is all about, and the posts that follow will be less info than you will get from any cookbook or instructional baking site and rather more about the actual process of being a baker and the techniques and tips that might help you be a better baker at home.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a writer. Have been for over 25 years, and for most of them, I made a living in one form or another writing articles for magazines about food, wine, travel, personalities and sports, and books that ranged from guidebooks to the Pacific NW, where I live, to readers for middle-school kids and a sweet memoir about teaching baseball to my son. I've been to over 35 countries on assignment and have swooned over the baked goods at the finest patisseries in Paris to the sweet shops of Scotland and Tokyo.

In recent years, I've also become a crazed baker, as passionate and committed to learning about it as I've ever been about anything in my life. Pies, breads, cakes, tarts, souffles...I read about them, studied techniques, and practiced them at home until my family threw up their chubby hands and cried out, "No mas! Not even one single more Gateau St. Honore! We mean it."

So this year, with a lot less money coming in from writing than I had hoped for, and no end in sight for this obsession I had begun with baking, I decided to turn pro. I thought about opening my own bakery in the little Oregon town where I live, and even went so far as to rent a commercial kitchen for one grueling, slap-upside-the-head, 18-hour day of baking for a Farmer's Market (in which I netted $30 after costs). Damn near killed me, and was utterly discouraging, although the lemon tarts, chocolate cupcakes and coconut-cream pies I made were things of rare beauty.

And then I got lucky: I was hired to be the part-time, assistant baker for a retirement home that serves three meals a day to about 185 seniors, and in the interview they said the magic words: "We bake from scratch." This meant hundreds of cookies, dozens of bowls of puddings and cobblers and crisps, about 15 cakes or pies for any given meal, as well as 3-5 loaves of fresh bread for lunch and dinner, and specialty breads like scones, muffins or banana bread for breakfasts.

And with every single dish that goes into those commercial convection ovens, and every pound of batter that is blended in the big, industrial mixers, comes a myriad of questions. How long do I knead this? How much butter goes into it? How would I glaze this? Can I make a gluten-free and sugar-free version? Will I get this done in time for the 4 p.m. deadline to have everything plated and ready to serve in the dining rooms? How do you make a fig bread, a Hawaiian haupia, a dozen banana cream pies?

These are things we'll mull over in PASTRYOLOGY, and I'll share the answers I find. Hope you enjoy the ride.