Hello from newsletter No. 26. It’s good to have you here.
If you’re reading this, chances are you’re already a subscriber, a fellow follower of all that is exciting and engaging about the world of baking, from whole grains to seasonal fruit and flavour-forward ingredients.
If this is your first time here, you can expect musings, commentary, ideas and inspiration concerning the act and art of baking, including its more esoteric bits and pieces.
As the weeks pass, I realise Bake Sense is not exclusively about baking but all the occurrences in life that make me want to bake or create. The external stimuli that provoke visceral responses to produce an actual something.
Often, I write to share, whether it be a recipe, a technique or a flavour exploration (if you’re new here, then look through the archive for lots of these). Sometimes I write for myself because to write is to learn about one’s self, and this week I realised I have a lot of feelings concerning the Strawberry.
The poster fruit for summer, the omnipresent and most widely adored ‘berry’. The sweetest part of the season. The ubiquitous flavouring of my youth, inescapable in yoghurts, ice cream, sweets, lip balm and medicine. Could I need therapy for a deep-rooted and emotionally complex relationship with this aggregate accessory masquerading as a berry?
I am not allergic, not so much as even the most mild oral allergy syndrome. They do not make my lips tingle, skin itch, or tongue swell. I do not dislike their taste, and I am not averse to eating them. I appreciate them just enough, but I don’t love them.
To tend to this abject lack of amore for something others clamour over, I spent my downtime thinking about them, their shape, colour, texture and flavour to give the damn things a chance to get under my skin. They can never compete with the apricot or gooseberry that straddle their season, but we can be friends in the end. I’ve learnt to love them a little more; I just needed to count the ways.
Colour and Shape
Strawberries win points for appearance, heart-shaped and saturated with colours ranging from carmine through geranium and on to deep cadmium. They are striking in their contrast with the creamy white colour spectrum of dairy. They’re prime candidates for decor either whole, halved, quartered or sliced to reveal their candy pink cross-section.
The classic Fraisier cake shows them off to full effect, where their tear-drop shape damns a centre of mousseline cream and serves as ornamental pillars that separate two layers of light genoise. A natural form that is architecturally beautiful and, in this case, purposeful.
Flavour and Texture
Lacklustre cultivars abound, flavour and aroma secondary to yield and transportability. The strawberry is ultimately a victim of its own success, so adored and desired all year round that the most widely available fruits lack all the complex nuances of the wild strawberry, the musk strawberry and the prized Gariguette.
They must be picked ripe and enjoyed within hours to catch them at their very best. Happen upon the good stuff where fragrance and flavour combine, and they have an intensity that is best appreciated sun-warmed, either out of hand or with the best chilled cream you can find.
Aside from flavour, their texture is perfect for only a short time before turning spongey as its structure collapses with natural ageing. They are pectin deficient to a fault which can make jamming a challenge without the addition of commercial pectin or pairing with a pectin-rich fruit such as redcurrants; luckily for strawberries, their seasons collide, and this is my most favourite and frequent way of dealing with them.
When the stars do not align (which is all the time when it comes to strawberries), I find joy in the challenge of coaxing flavour from them, appreciating it as an opportunity to play matchmaker and approximate the platonic ideal of a strawberry. A focus on fragrance, sweetness and acidity is what’s needed. This is how I do it…