Bread school is making me feel a little challenged in the social arena these days. Setting aside my newly acquired habit of hauling many loaves of artisan bread around town, still warm from the oven from which I shoveled them just moments before and handing them out to friends, neighbors, former colleagues, and even complete strangers, I’m finding that school has permeated other parts of how I relate to those around me in a big way.






This weekend there was a rooftop barbecue with some old friends. Before baking school, I had other things going on to which others could relate, and so, we would gab on about amusing anecdotes from our corporate jobs and other, um, normal stuff like that.

Now, fully immersed in the world of artisan bread and lacking the bandwidth to deal in much else, I’m even more inclined to gab on about baking, yeast fermentation in all of its forms, steam injection ovens, the nuances of temperature in dough structure, blah, blah, blah. I’ll let you in on a little secret if you ever attend cooking school – not many people outside of the food industry care about these things.





One guy politely asked me the difference between baking soda and baking powder, just because he at least knew that they both went into some banana bread that he’d made with his girlfriend. I don’t think he expected the ten minute explanation I gave him, which might explain why his eyes glazed over and he started slowly backing away from me and looking around for someone to come rescue him from our conversation.





Luckily, there’s cake baking to distract me from bread baking. I enjoyed a beautiful Saturday morning market trip, and my haul was full of incredible goodies, reminding me, just like our first sunny week since April, that summer is finally here.





These are the happy months when I go to the market each week, buy whatever tickles me, and then come home and plow through my cookbooks and binders of recipes, deciding what to do with it all. Dorie Greenspan has so many recipes that are market-ready, it’s no surprise that I keep coming back to her again and again. She saved me from being a complete social pariah this weekend, because hey, the baking nerd may be boring, but damn, she makes one fine cake.


With the tart plums offset perfectly by the delicate sweetness of this moist cake, this is one fine cake, indeed.

Dimply Plum Cake

Adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Serves 8

1 1/2 cups all purpose four

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

5 tablespoons unsalted butter

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

2 large eggs

1/3 cup canola oil

Grated zest of one lemon

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

8 purple or red plums, halved and pitted

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter an 8×8 baking pan, flour the bottom and sides, and set aside.

2. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt and ground cardamom.

3. In a stand mixer, cream the butter with the brown sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the oil, lemon zest and vanilla. Reduce the speed and add the flour mixture, and mix only until just incorporated. Pour the batter in the prepared dish, smooth the top and arrange the plums on top, cut side up. I found it was useful to arrange them 4×4.

4. Bake for about 40 minutes or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean and the top is brown with the plums set well into the cake. Let cool for at least 15 minutes (the juices of the plums will get sucked back into the fleshy parts of the fruit) before loosening the edges of the cake with a knife and inverting the cake on a baking rack. Return the cake to face up and cool the rest of the way.