This trend may be the best thing to come from Quarantine 2020.
Home baking is back, and Mr. DeMille, it's ready for it's close up!
Go on any social media site nowadays and you'll see people posting pictures of their latest bread creations. Boules and loaves, sourdough and focaccia...the internet is exploding with bread.
But is this something new, or have all these people been baking bread the entire time and we, the hungry public, just haven't known it? Or has the thought of being home with now end in sight spurred on a great resurgence of home bread baking?
An incomplete and thoroughly unscientific poll on Facebook shows that, generally, people were "occasional" bakers before, and then started experimenting with sourdoughs because of their newfound time. For some, it's about finding some inner peace during the current crisis. For others it's about making up for a grocery shortfall. Sometimes it's about feeding themselves and their families a product with fewer ingredients than what they can find at the store.
Rachel Wyman, owner of Montclair Bread Company in Montclair, NJ, saw an opportunity to get people excited about home baking and started posting step-by-step photos of how to produce some of her fan favorites. "I'm sharing my recipes because I know a lot of people are bored, entertaining kids, missing their favorite [Montclair Bread Company] baked goods, or all three. I've gotten such a positive response it's been easy to keep going."
Like most trends in the modern age, posting begets doing, doing begets posting, and it gains a foothold. What about you? Did you bake at home before the quarantine? Maybe you're a professional baker and doing so feels as natural as waking up. If you never baked before, what have you started with and how is it going? Share pictures of your breads in the comments. Here are a few to get things started
