Dear Bakers and Friends,
I know, I know - it’s been a while since I last was in touch. That said, there’s always a fresh, free new recipe posted at the website. It’s on the Note from Marcy page on the website each month if you remember to check. This month I’ve posted a couple for you, all free.
I’ve also fixed (and still fixing) the Recipe Archive Index so that it’s far more effective! Now you can search by recipe title, or by category but it should be MUCH easier for you to find things. I’m still updating it but hope you have a look. As far as recipe access BB Memberships, there are no promotions going on these days but subscription are still available if you choose to re-subscribe. I still add new recipes all the time in addition to the massive data base of my recipes already there.
I certainly do miss writing to the ‘collective you’ imagining a sea of gentle readers who aside from baking presumably enjoy similar values to me, which is to say we hail from another time, say somewhere between Jane Austen (1775) and Louisa May Alcott (1836). Did you know these two only missed each other by a fifteen-year gap. However, Miss Alcott would have been able to read the (already published) Miss Austen and I have no reason to think she did not. The bridge between them was Charlotte Bronte and all three shared a view of independent, intelligent female protagonists. But I digress.
Newsletter and women writers aside, I’ve been putting my quiet time to good use chasing serenity, which is of course, an oxymoron. Instead of twelve errands a day, I only do two and even that takes incredible restraint. I could manage 8-10 errands, but I will will feel the ill effects a day or a week later. So instead of watching the TV morning news shows, I sit on the deck with incense and sip tea. TBH: I must put a timer on, so I don’t leap up to trim, water plants, or find some two-minute task. I’ve made the 4-5:30 slot my daily quiet time in which I read, meditate and do not scroll – it’s my afternoon oasis that I honor like an 11th commandment. I also do slow breathing in the car enroute to anywhere just to quiet my system down. Admittedly these are all small tweaks but it’s a start. I’ve discovered that we can all use so more white spaces in our calendars, which segues to the Labor Day upon us.
Don’t you find that Labour Day has this thing about it? All seasons have their theme taste. There’s a flavor to the bittersweet goodbye to the summer that led this wee feeling of loss and regret. One feels wistful for the things we intended to do, the fresh air we forgot to breathe, and scent of trees and rain we forgot to notice and inhale. In short, there’s a quiet sigh of regret or self-reproach for all the plans and good intentions we set in May.
Then there’s early to mid fall – and the mood is characterized by to-do lists, life and work resets, wellness programs, hospitality but mostly, this incredible sense of brimming. Harvests are coming in making cooks and bakers heady with recipes to try. It’s stocking up time and there’s a kitchen orchestra of dry legumes, root vegetables, and crocks pots awaiting the chef-conductor. Fall also means winter is also on the way but it’s hard to think about that in this bountiful time what with the trees sporting their most splendid orange-hued best frocks. The autumn eau du parfum is apples and smoke, late day butterscotch sun and memories. Some of us are leaving or starting new jobs or retiring, sending kids off to college, or figuring out a Rosh Hashanah menu, registering for painting or Pilates, adult ballet or looking forward to a new book club and it’s all laced with a special energy and anticipation.
Overall, on this beautiful August morning, as I write you, I find myself taking a breath and refilling my well. Although some home renovation and reorganization (and the Jewish New Year) swell my schedule, I feel on the verge of more peace and that is a rare, sweet spot I’m going to savour.
My bread cookbook Bread Love is in its last stages of production and mid-late fall seems like when it will launch in print (soft cover, hard back) and e-book. Usually, I feel a bit postpartum when I finish a big project, but this book had long labour pains and I feel very ready to let it fly from the nest. Instead of the usual burn-out I’m lusting to write other things. Should I do the novel, the western fantasy novelette or more recipes? I think I will take some long walks and see how the trees and sky weigh in and navigate me.
The Apples of 5787/2026
As fall arrives, and I give the summer I fought a loving hug goodbye, I suddenly realize that Rosh Hashanah is almost here! As it is with all early New Year’s, the apples aren’t at their best for apple baking; they’re barely ripe!! But what is it lately with apples? They taste like a raw potato (bless their cold-hearted hearts and yes, I’m looking at you Granny Smith), or like apple pulp (storage apples from all over the world) or look pretty and taste like sweet upholstery stuffing. It certainly makes me miss my own apple tree from my last house.
Most sources disdain McInstosh for baking but in a pie, to my taste, you need pie 'mush' to fill in the cracks and McInstosh sacrifices itself willingly. Cortland holds its shape (and dignity) better and the two are a great couple. I use a shredded Granny Smith for some tartness but it's a uni-dimensional apple unless I've never had a good one. The Golden Delicious apple is indeed golden but not particularly delicious but when it’s put into service in an open-faced tart, it's a pretty lass especially if you doll it up with apple jelly, apple butter, and dust it with cinnamon. Why we still have Paulared in these parts: I don’t know – and ditto for Spartan, Lobo, and Empire – they aren’t quite great for eating, not quite great for pie and the flavors seem washed out of them by this point. Melba is ambrosial but small, but it’s only here for 11 hours. But in short, what looks pretty in apples and apple baking isn't always what tastes quite as grand.
Big Apple or the industrial apple system is founded on thin-skinned apples that store and travel well. They weren’t bred for flavor or performance or at least, that wasn’t the priority as far as I can tell. And older varieties of apples like Wolf River, gorgeous pie apples the size of a baby’s head are only available in private or heritage orchards. But these days no matter where the apples are from (except your own backyard or at a pick-your-own orchards) they aren’t ambrosial nor even local. Even a recent (trusty) Red Delicious I had tasted like something a horse walked over and it was all brown and soft inside.
So, what to do? I do a few things. I taste a lot of apples very close to Rosh Hashanah, from markets, and stands, Costco and organic food shops. I combine crispy, soft, sweet, and tart apples in one recipe. Most often I sauté them a little bit before dumping them in my Deep-Dish Apple Cake or my Mother’s Famous Apple Cake/Pie/Tart (all these recipes btw are in my first cookbook, A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking. Softening the apples a bit before baking with them seems a no-brainer and it’s yielded far better results. The apple flavors emerge more and there’s no watery apple juice leaching through the baking, be it pie, crostata, strudel, or cake.
Other than apple gossip…..
Books I heartily recommend:
If you like Widow’s Bay, you’ll enjoy The Fishman’s Gift. The Fisherman’s gift isn’t spooky, but it is about an island, its people and a myth or memory. An almost-drown boy who washes up on shore and his care is given to the town’s single woman who once had a child who would have been a similar age. Is it a miracle? Did the sea return her son? Redemption, fate or about a healing journey? It’s beautiful.
Yesteryear – a polarizing book soon-to-be streaming series with Anne Hathaway, this caught me with the tight writing, the even-I-didn’t-see-the-ending-coming finale, and mesmerizing tale plucked from today’s headlines of domestic influences, aka trad-wives. (Check out
The Pillars of the Earth: if someone asked me if I was interested in a 1000 tome on building a cathedral, I would have given them a doubting look. But this is so incredibly readable, the characters so finely drawn so that you care about them, and delightfully historical about an era I knew naught about (see, even my language changed since reading it) I couldn’t put it down. It also totally convinced me that I could indeed, at my ripe age, get into a ‘big’ book and concentrate. It was my refuge for ten days in July.
Wild, Dark Shore – something about this artfully written book that ties mystery, romance, ecology issues took me by surprise. There’s also something about settings that combine relationships in an isolated environment that attract me.
And more that are gems: Foster Child by Claire and The Tree Monster by Patrick Ness, American Han by Lisa Lee, Crying in H Mart, and Our Souls at Night. I read many other books but was disappointed and can’t recommend them. Some were well-written but with characters I could care less about or didn’t seem real. I’ve also been reading great American, and British poetry and sniffing through Home Sense (TJ Max to some) for beautiful editions of the aforementioned Jane Austen, Ms. Bronte, and Louisa May Alcott. It’s a thing: the classics are getting do-overs for bargain prices.
These days I’m doing a deep dive into homemade croissants, back at tango classes, attacking my TBR shelf, enjoying the Blue Jays run at the wild card spot, Nancy Meyering-up my fall house décor, going for long and reflective walks, and resisting buying a kitten (in which case I might just visit a cat café instead). It definitely feels like a new season here and a fresh start and if you know anything about me, you know I am a pushover for beginnings. Anything is possible.
I am wishing you all a beautiful and sweet fall. Happy Labour Day Monday and happy and sweet Rosh Hashanah. (And don’t forget to utilize the better (and still-being-improved-recipe index on the site), stayed tuned for Bread Love cookbook).
(For some free recipes of the month, please visit https://betterbaking.com/free-recipe-2025/)
Marcy Goldman
Master Baker, Author, Publisher
Betterbaking.com
est. 1997
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