A Baking Tradition Separated by an Ocean
Woman in the Middle | October 25, 2016I enjoy watching the Great British Baking Show on my local PBS station. After the latest contest was won, they did some further episodes, “master classes” they called them, to show the viewers how to make the various delightful goodies they made on the show. You know how they say Americans and British are two peoples, separated by a common language? Well, I think we are separated by a shared baking history as well. Half the time I have no idea what they are talking about!
First, they bake, sort of, by the metric system. They still use teaspoons and tablespoons, for some reason, but then they measure all the other ingredients by weight in grams, So that means every home baker needs a little electronic scale to weigh everything. How annoying is that?
Second, many of the things they bake are from other European countries or are “traditional” British goodies that are rarely made over here. At least I have never seen them.
Finally. there are the ingredients. What the heck is liquid glucose? Or gelatin leaves? Or strong flour, which different from plain flour? Or how about castor sugar? IT is all so confusing, but still fun to watch. I will never be making any of the baked goods, anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter if they use the metric system and a bunch of ingredients I have never heard of!
That show would be fun to watch to find out what the British eat.