Day 215/365 - What's Cooking?

Real men wear aprons ; )

This week's self-portrait is a shot of me taken from the perspective of my oven. I wasn't actually baking anything today. I meant to go to the grocery store but it started raining yet again, so I just had some leftover cold pizza for dinner.

I enjoy cooking and especially baking. It's kind of like edible carpentry. You start out with some raw parts that aren't good for much by themselves, measure precisely, combine them carefully, and you eventually wind up with something really good. But unlike the case with a table or bookshelf, you can eat the final product.

I'm pretty good at baking cakes, pies, muffins, and quick breads, but I don't know how to make yeast breads. The whole kneading and rising and punching it down thing seems awfully complicated, so I just cheat and use a bread machine. One of these days I'd like to take a bread baking class though so I could learn how to do it the old-fashioned way.

The other thing I can't bake is cookies. I've tried and tried but I always make a mess of them. They invariably end up either over or underdone. Cookies are my baking kryptonite.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)