recipe for success?

I’m Jessica, and welcome to my Kitchen Chemistry blog! This is a particularly exciting course for me, not only because I love all things food-related – cooking, baking, food writing, culinary documentaries, and so on – but also because I avidly keep up with The Great British Bake-Off, and I would love to be able to say I know the science behind why Kim-Joy’s naan bread flopped last season.

The last time I took a chemistry class was in high school, but I actually kind of liked it, especially when compared to physics, and maybe even biology (who needs to know that many parts of the cell? I’m alive, so I imagine they’re all doing their jobs just fine). This is definitely a course I’m looking forward to for the rest of the semester, and I hope to be a more knowledgeable cook as well as scientist when it’s complete.

I’m also very excited about the intersection of this course with the other half of its cluster, Eatalians. Culinary history, the sociology of food, and how that relates to the science of its preparation is a whole big topic that interests me greatly. In addition to the GBBO, I’ve hungrily consumed all of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown (multiple times!), his book A Cook’s Tour, David Chang’s Ugly Delicious, Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat, and many more. The last book I read was Robin Sloan’s

Sourdough, which was very passionate on the subject of fermentation, so the ciabatta lesson is one I’m probably most looking forward to – if not because I’ve never been able to make a loaf of bread that looked quite right.

Thanks for stopping by, and look forward to my first creation – breadsticks!