Useful things / Useless things

Today: Anna Merlan, author of REPUBLIC OF LIES: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power; and Brian Hioe, Taipei-based editor, translator, activist, DJ, and co-founder of New Bloom.

Issue No. 226

Cheap, Ingenious Baking Stuff That’s Nice to Have
Anna Merlan

Tidying Up
Brian Hioe

Cheap, Ingenious Baking Stuff That’s Nice to Have

by Anna Merlan

I am not a professional baker, or anything close to it; I’m just an amateur home messer-arounder and a snarky little critic of certain other people’s breads. But baking has made an undeniably positive difference in my life: logistically, metaphysically, and of course, interpersonally, giving me a hobby I can talk about with my family, Instagram, the various grannies and aunties of the grocery store, and a server at an Italian restaurant who once gave me four free loaves of bread because I recognized how good it was and asked questions. (It was made with wheat from her family’s farm, which definitely helped.)   

As with a lot of hobbies, it’s possible to go nuts spending a lot of money on baking equipment. I haven’t gone that route, because I quite simply couldn’t afford to. It took me years to buy a Dutch oven to bake in (I used a heavy oven-safe soup pot before that) and when I did get one, it was because the Martha Stewart oval ones were on sale for under $100. (It was this model, which I guess you can no longer buy, though it looks like there are some great deals on eBay.) I was only able to get a stand mixer because a friend generously gave us a broken one, which my husband then fixed. 

All of which is to say: if you don’t have the budget for nice baking stuff, that is A-OK. There are tiny upgrades that are fun, user-friendly, and most of all, cheap. All of these came into my life in the last year, and now, with the zeal of the converted, I pass them on to you.