Probably the most quintessential act one thinks about when they imagine spending the day in a kitchen is baking. The act of mixing ingredients, kneading dough, smelling freshly baked cookies coming out of the oven and spreading butter on a freshly sliced challah bread. Baking is both satisfying and risky…when you try a new recipe and the dough rises as it should or the scone crumbles appropriately, you feel like you could be the next Martha Stewart. However, the failures can be devastating…why did the cookies go flat? How did the pancakes burn? It’s as though you had never set foot in a kitchen before.
One of my life goals is to one day own my own small bakery. One of my goals in the Camp Fowler kitchen has been to bake as much as possible from scratch. Ideally I wanted to get to the point where I could JUST do the baking and leave the rest of the cooking tasks to my many able assistants over the years. That never quite panned out, but I got to do my fair share. Each summer over the last nine years I’ve tried to pick out the next item we’d add to our “homemade” list. In the beginning it was easy to bake all the cookies and brownies from scratch…no brainers. And, so much more delicious than using frozen dough or boxed mixes! And really, it doesn’t take that much more time. Pancakes, another no-brainer. One reason why homemade is so much better is because you can tweak recipes any way you want. In our pancakes we add oats and whole-wheat flour to increase nutritional value, and have the flexibility to do the same with ANY of our baked goods. We know exactly what goes into our products and this helps us to address allergies and other food issues.
Also included in our baked from scratch list are: bread for grilled cheese and other sandwiches, bread bowls for soups, cornbread, coffee cake, blueberry love muffins, banana bread, pumpkin bread, granola, Italian bread, dinner rolls and pizza crusts. This past summer we added the cinnamon raisin bread for French toast and the English muffins for the “moose muffins” (breakfast sandwiches)! The few items we do not bake from scratch are hamburger, hot dog and sub rolls, tortillas and bagels. Pretty impressive considering the amount of people we feed!
Here’s a slideshow of some of our delicious baked goods. Enjoy!
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