A Common Language Barrier
Saturday night, my wife and i were invited by our friends across the river in Farley MO to help celebrate the 89th birthday of Rob's mother. We used the opportunity to present a copy of the BBA to their daughter Ryoko as a late birthday/early Christmas gift. She's a junior in high school and really very good in the kitchen. I brought a loaf of a sourdough potato bread that I'm working on as a recipe.
After the meal, Rob asked how I went about the making and baking of the loaf. I couldn't get very far because I was using weights in my description rather than volumes. I thought that I was explaining the practicality of weight in a formula or recipe for the consistency and quality of results but Rob wanted cups rather grams. I guess that was where I should've remembered Samuel Clemens' statement that "it's better to stay quiet and let people think you're a fool than to open your mouth and confirm their suspicions".
How many other people here have run into that barrier?
Comments
At least you are using measurements. I always feel like a total dummy when I eyeball a loaf and then people ask how I did it. How much water? "Uh... some." Flour? "Err... some more." How long did you bake it? "Until it was done." I suppose I should tell them about how I was getting all Zen and one with the ingredients, but I usually just end up mumbling.
to run into someone who is as involved in bread making and can immediately relate. I find it enough to just tell most "it's a spelt loaf" or "it contains some rye" or "no worry, no nuts" than anything else. If they truly are curious, the grain end of the conversation will grow, if not, like you said, keep it simple.
That's why TFL is such a godsend! Here we can talk about details in bread and no one looks sideways (except if the picture is posted as such.)
If you haven't seen it.... More than just a language barrier:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/2450/you-know-youre-breadmaker-when-fun-thread
As a very new baker I think it might be more an issue of visualization than a language barrier. I quickly realized that weight was better than volume measure but I'm just now getting to where I think in ounces. In other words to imagine how big of a pile 15 ounces of flour was, I had to convert it to cups to "see" it in my mind.
Kind of like metric versus english measurements.