I’ve recently become obsessed with the Great British Bake Off. I found their videos on YouTube and have spent many an hour watching Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood critique someone’s “sponge” and state that a pie has a “soggy bottom”. They are imparting a lot of knowledge, along with some hilarious, good and sweet jokes from the comedy team of Mel & Sue. One of the things I like about it most is that they entire group of people competing are all friendly and cooperative in a very British way. In the USA, they would all be at each other’s throats and willing to poison the other’s Victoria Sandwich for a chance at the title. Given the divisiveness of the country right now, I could use more niceness.
Of course, this is mostly just dreaming for me, as I have celiac disease and wouldn’t be able to eat a speck of what they baked (although they did do a gluten free pita bread recipe once!) I am getting obsessed with YouTube cooking videos and I’m trying to basically do cooking school through them, and figuring out what I want to do myself. I’m just drinking in all the different recipes and techniques and see what resonates with me and figure out if I can adjust some recipes for myself. Since I have a number of dietary restrictions (vegetarian, celiac, and a sulfur sensitivity), I have to be very careful about what I eat, and I’ve had to adjust so many things. Right now I’m working on a sort of spreadsheet/database of what are the components of all cooking or baking, so that I can figure out how to combine them in really interesting ways. I’m sure that I’ll be writing a blog post on that soon.
Given these two things, I would really love to have a number of other people who I could get together with and develop and share recipes with, attempt cooking and baking, and eat stuff together. Sort of a cooking and baking development group where we all teach each other. I would love to go to a cooking school to learn techniques, but I’d be afraid that I wouldn’t be able to eat most of what they’d want to teach. I’m doing a lot of this on my own, and I’d love to have some other people for the ride. I do get to vicariously work with some great gluten free bloggers (glutenfreegirl.com is my favorite), and I have random other bloggers and YouTube cooks that I often find recipes. As good as that is, would be great to have some cooking friends here. Anyone want to come over to my place monthly for a fun cooking time?
That said, I would also love to see a Great Gluten Free Bake Off. It would be awesome to see some of these gluten free bloggers try lots of different baking and show it off to the world. It would be an inspiration for me! Until then, I’ll just keep looking for recipes that inspire me, like the Dark Teff Sandwich Bread you see in the picture below.
