“Baking cookies is comforting, and cookies are the sweetest little bit of comfort food. They are very bite-sized and personal.” – Sandra Lee

One unexpected side effect of the stay-at-home orders in Indiana: Many households turned to their ovens for food, sweets, and comfort.

With the closing down of the state of Indiana in March, many citizens were given little choice but to turn to their kitchens for sustenance and comfort. The restaurants that we all used to enjoy had (mostly) closed, except for some rare curbside pick-up services offered by the most desperate of owners. And outside of any pre-made foods offered through the bakeries and kitchens within grocery stores, Indiana’s own were relegated to cooking and feeding themselves. This was a difficult moment, as there were some Hoosiers who had, because of prevalent fast food and the convenience of ready-to-eat meals, forgotten how to use a pot or pan. Fortunately for those culinarily unskilled few, there was still the microwave.

But as the more piquant-prone Hoosiers discovered, cooking and baking for ones’ self and family is an extremely satisfying pastime. Especially if the results of ones’ efforts are as delicious as a three-course dinnertime spread for four for less than $20. That is right. Not only was the home-cooked, love-filled food that Hoosiers made in their own kitchens more delicious, more satisfying, and tastier – it was far cheaper and far more nutritious than eating fast food.

Stress and the Kitchen

Going into quarantine, it was not relevant if someone did or did not know how to make their way around the kitchen.

The saying goes: if there is a will, there is a way – along with literally thousands of helpful and very visual cooking tutorials via YouTube videos. The cooking newbs learned the basics like how to shop for and order groceries online, how to make rice, and how to make omelets. And all Hoosiers flung themselves with abandon into their respective kitchens and began a phase of ‘stress baking’ the likes of which no one had ever seen before.

In our stress, worry, anxiety, and fear of the oncoming dangers of Covid-19, we turned to our refrigerators, cutting boards, mixing bowls, pots, pans, and trusty ovens. And when we ran out of other things to do with our hands, our time, and our whirring minds, we baked bread, cookies, cakes, cupcakes, pies, cobblers, whosits, whatsits, strudels, casseroles, ice creams, icings, eclairs, donuts, delights, and more.

You see, when people get stressed out, our amygdala (the part of the brain that handles our emotions) starts going a bit haywire – the effects of which can show up in our bodies in weird ways. Well, guess what, the amygdala also controls our heart rate and breathing. Thus, people who might be under more stress than normal have reported that they feel short of breath and/or their heart is pounding.

And unfortunately, our nervous system is so complex that, during times of stress, we also have a different area of our brains, the prefrontal cortex, working a little less hard at regulating emotions as it should. This results in our emotions, and their corresponding systems, being triggered, but as Wired’s article “Why Stress Baking and Cleaning Make You Less Anxious” points out, “the systems that keep them in check are slowing down.”

When this built-in fear response misfires, people need to ‘reset’ their brains to regulate all systems. Scientists recommend taking part in activities that offer a sense of accomplishment and control, like baking or bike riding. These kinds of activities allow a person to focus on a series of small tasks that offer a distraction from stress triggers, like politics, social media, and the news.

Recipe: Simple, Homemade Biscuits

Want to bake some simple, homemade biscuits to get your mind off the surrealistic news of the day? This recipe calls for only six ingredients: all-purpose flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, butter, and milk.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 12 minutes

Total Time: 27 minutes

Servings: 6 biscuits

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour (250g)

1 Tablespoon baking powder

1 Tablespoon granulated sugar

1 teaspoon salt

6 Tablespoons unsalted butter very cold (85g) (unsalted European butter is ideal, but not required)

3/4 cup whole milk, (177ml) buttermilk, or 2% milk will also work

Instructions

· First, chill your butter in the freezer for 10-20 minutes before beginning this recipe. The butter must be very cold to get those light, flaky, buttery biscuits

· Preheat oven to 425F and line a cookie sheet with nonstick parchment paper

· In a large mixing bowl, mix flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt

· Take the butter from the fridge, and, either cut it into your flour mixture using a pastry cutter or (preferred) use a box grater to shred the butter into small pieces. Add cold, cut butter to the flour mixture, and stir until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs

· Add milk and stir with a wooden spoon or spatula until just combined

· A transfer resulting biscuit dough to a well-floured surface and use your hands to gently work the dough together. If the dough is too sticky, add flour until it is manageable.

· Once the dough is cohesive, fold in half over itself and use your hands to gently flatten layers together. Rotate the dough 90 degrees and fold in half again, repeating this step 5-6 times but taking care to not overwork the dough.

· Now, use your hands (do not use a rolling pin) to flatten the dough to 1" thick and lightly dust a 2 3/4" round biscuit cutter with flour.

· Making close cuts, press the biscuit cutter straight down into the dough and drop the biscuit onto your prepared baking sheet.

· Place resulting biscuits 1/2" apart on a baking sheet.

· Once you have gotten as many biscuits as possible out of the dough, gently re-work the dough to get out another biscuit or two, until you have at least 6 biscuits.

· Bake at 425F for 12 minutes or until tops are beginning to just turn lightly golden brown.

· If desired, brush with melted salted butter immediately after removing from the oven.

· Serve warm and enjoy.

Baking as Therapy

Baking as a form of mindfulness and cognitive therapy is not new. Over recent years, ‘culinary therapy’ options have become more mainstream and started to pop up around the country. Experts have provided evidence that these cooking/therapy sessions are helpful, even though the neuroscience behind it has not yet been examined.

Julie Ohana, who owns Culinary Art Therapy in Michigan, said “The idea of cooking, and baking in particular, really requires a certain level of mindfulness, of putting aside everything else that’s going on around you and being present in the moment. We all need to eat. Why not really put your all into that dish you’re cooking and really get everything out of it that you can?”

Along those same lines of meditation and mindfulness, and as a Delish article about stress baking so eloquently put it, “When you're baking, you can't help but be engaged; a lack of attention during an activity that requires such scientific precision could screw everything up. And when it seems like the world is ending, you do not want [messed] up cookies. You just do not. So, you embed yourself so deeply in the measuring and then pouring, and the mixing, and the rolling, and the shaping, and whatever else your recipe asks you to do. And by the end, you've got a little less stress and a dozen more cupcakes.”

Eater magazine describes it thusly, “anxiety baking [is] … a response to present-day collective distress and working conditions.” The article goes on to explain that, “procrastibaking [is] … the practice of baking something completely unnecessary to avoid ‘real’ work.” Additionally, baking also carries the allure of creativity so it essentially satisfies the need for both control and creativity, with the bonus of procrastination.

During the early days of the coronavirus quarantine, baking bread, and most especially banana bread, seemed to take over social media platforms. For weeks in the Spring and Summer of 2020, one could not escape Instagram images of beautifully decorated and steaming loaves of bread in a variety of beautiful plate settings and cut open in front of countless decadent and homey backdrops. There was enough demand for overripe bananas that even the green and as-yet inedible bananas were sold out of many grocery stores.

Great-Grandma Letha’s Banana Bread

In honor of this oft-praised early quarantine baking ritual, here is a century-old delicious banana bread recipe passed down through my own family:

Ingredients

- 2/3 c. granulated sugar

- 2 eggs (unbeaten)

- 1 c. mashed bananas (2-3 overly ripe or black bananas)

- 1/3 c. shortening or unsalted butter

- 1 ¾ c. all-purpose flour

- ¼ t. baking soda

- ½ t. salt

- 2 t. baking powder

- ½ c. chopped nuts (optional)

How-To Instructions

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease bread pan of choice.

- In a large mixing bowl, add sugar, eggs, bananas, and butter and mix well.

- In a separate bowl, sift flour, baking soda, salt, and baking powder.

- Add dry mix to wet mix in small doses and stir.

- The bread mix will be wet. At this stage, add the nuts if you would like.

- Pour mixture into greased bread pan and bake for about one hour.

- When the toothpick comes out clean, the bread is done!

To Yeast, or Not to Yeast?

Especially in the early days of social distancing, it could be difficult to find a decent loaf of bread at the grocery store. Many Hoosiers became so desperate for their routine and daily peanut butter and jelly sammy that they started to bake their own bread to replace what they could not find in the empty bread aisle shelves. That is when almost every Hoosier looked up simultaneously and needed the best bread starter recipe.

Internet searches spiked for bread recipes and guides on how to make yeast starters for bread, which are fantastic to have in any kitchen because they can be used time and time again for years and years. And because of that very reason, the yeast flew off the shelves faster than you can say ‘Lemony Snicket.’ In fact, yeast sales grew 647% in March alone, while alternative bread ingredients grew in corresponding popularity as well.

According to one Research and Markets study, some people “reported difficulty in finding ingredients like flour, baking powder, and sugar in stores. There has also been increased interest in ingredients for finished baked goods from bakeries who have seen a loss in demand from the foodservice industry due to closures of restaurants and hotels. Many are looking to move into longer-shelf life breads and packaged baked goods for the retail market.”

But there are options for baking loaves of bread from scratch without the help of pre-packaged yeast: making your own bread starter. Sourdough bread starters gained quite a bit of popularity in April and May of 2020.

Sourdough Starter Recipe

An Indy Star article introduced local baker Cathy Richardson, who explained with a slight chuckle, "Sourdough takes time, but not a lot of your time." That is because to make an active bread starter from scratch, you must grow it over a week. The best kind of sourdough recipe requires only three ingredients: flour, water, and salt. “A sourdough starter is no more complicated than combining flour and water. The mixture relies on natural yeast and bacteria present in the air and on a baker's hands to ferment. This culture is nurtured daily in a routine in which 80 percent of the material is discarded and new flour and water are introduced.” But enough explanation, here is the recipe:

Ingredients

For the first day:

- 30 g all-purpose flour (1/4 c.)

- 30 g rye, whole-wheat, or all-purpose flour (1/4 c.)

- 60 g water, room temperature (1/4 c.)

For each following day:

- 30 g starter (about 2 tbsp.)

- 30 g all-purpose flour (1/4 c.)

- 30 g rye, whole-wheat, or all-purpose flour (1/4 c.)

- 60 g water, room temperature (1/4 c.)

How-To Instructions

- In a wide-mouth jar, stir together all ingredients until well combined. Cover and keep a jar in a warm, shady part of your kitchen.

- Every day at roughly the same time, discard all but two tablespoons of the starter mixture and then feed the starter with equal amounts of flours and water.

- Continue discarding and feeding the starter every day until you see bubble activity. This process will take 5 to 7 days.

- Once your starter is active, it will become “ripe” and ready for use in bread baking!

You know you are on the right sourdough track when your starter produces big, oblong bubbles. And once you have those bubbles, you can use that same starter material for many years of sourdough bread loaves.

The State of Baking

Throughout the first half of 2020, Hoosier’s buying and baking habits have changed drastically. Many of us have started taking long lists into groceries only once a month versus the weekly quick shopping trips of olden days. And when we do peruse the aisle of groceries, we have more motivation to get in, get what we need, and get out – all while making quick substitutions for the out-of-stock items.

Because of the unavailability of many baking ingredients, it is important to understand the versatility and ease of baking substitutions and quick tricks that help stress baking be less stressful.

Baking Substitutes and Tricks

Far be it for me to impede any baking work ahead of you in the kitchen. And in the chance that you do not have all the ingredients you need to make your favorite cookies, here are some tips and subs that have helped me out of a tight spot or two:

· Do not have eggs? No prob, Bob. Just replace with applesauce or ground up flaxseed or chia seeds. In fact, a half-cup of applesauce replaces about two eggs.

· Grind up some oats, found in oatmeal, if you have run out of flour.

· If you are fresh out of butter, do not fret. Use olive oil, coconut oil, or even vegetable oil. But be sure to look if the change in ingredients means a different measurement amount. (Hint: You can also use applesauce in place of butter, but the resulting bake could turn out crumblier.)

· Regardless of your recipe calls for salt or not, always put in a pinch of salt. It offers more complexity and richness of flavor in many sweet desserts.

Bon appétit!

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