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2 culinary legends explain how to improve your baking — and your mental health
Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from WBUR's weekly health newsletter, CommonHealth. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here.
"I'm a cook, not a baker.”
That's been my go-to line for years while apologizing for less than perfect-looking holiday baked goods.
I love to cook (when I have time). At the end of a day focused on often difficult news, I enjoy creating something delicious from whatever is in my kitchen, and making it up as I go. For me, this process is part tasting and part following a hunch, not a recipe. Mistakes are OK, because most of the time I end up with a good meal. To me, baking always seemed more precise, an art of patiently measuring and following directions — not my first choice to unwind at the end of a long day.
But during a recent event at WBUR's CitySpace, renowned chefs Joanne Chang and Dorie Greenspan convinced me that even I could whip up beautiful holiday treats. And more surprising still, they said it might be good for me to do so.
How, you may ask, could the pursuit of sweets be good for you?
“If you take up baking you won’t need a meditation class,” Chang said. “You just need to be present and focus.”
Chang said she enjoys doing what many of us might consider "mundane." Preparing hundreds — or in her case thousands — of perfect tartlets, for example.
"Once you make something and have to make hundreds of them, I feel like every time you make the next one, it's an opportunity to make it a little bit better," Chang said. "It's soothing to the soul."
I couldn’t help but wonder, "What if we have tons to do for the holidays with families, kids, pets, meals, gifts? Who can slow down?"
But Greenspan assured me the effort is worth it.
“There’s a lot of wiggle room in recipes,” she said. "Everyone should bake — it’s play.”
Chang and Greenspan also provided some great tips for lower-stress baking, even for those rushed — or impatient — bakers like me. Here are 10 of my favorites:
- Read the ENTIRE recipe first and set out all the ingredients. Make sure you have everything ready before you start creaming the butter and sugar.
- Most recipes call for all ingredients to be at room temperature. Yes, it's necessary, Chang said; there's science behind it. Putting a cold egg into perfectly whipped butter and sugar can destroy your recipe. If you need to speed up the warming process, put the eggs in warm water or cut the butter into small pieces and let them sit at room temperature for 15 minutes or so while you prepare the rest of the recipe.
- Measure with a kitchen scale. According to Chang, if you asked all 150 people in the audience to use their measuring cups to get a cup of flour, you'd find dozens of different amounts of flour. The scale is exact.
- Don’t put your creation into the oven until about 10 minutes after you get the alert that it's preheated to the desired temperature. Opening the oven door as soon as its preheated lets out heat, reducing the temperature quickly. Let your oven stabilize a bit.
- Check for hot spots in your oven. Put shredded coconut or bread on a baking sheet and notice which areas brown first. That will tell you how to rotate pans while baking.
- Use all-purpose flour almost exclusively. Even Greenspan’s famous cakes are primarily made with all-purpose flour. Chang will often add a bit of wheat or spelt flour for complexity of flavor, depending on the recipe.
- Granulated sugar is best.
- When it comes to butter, Cabot unsalted is their pick . You don’t need fancy European butter for baking, these chefs said. Save that for the table, and spread it on your treats.
- Salt is a grey area. Chang uses Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt; Greenspan uses fine sea salt. Here's where they agree: Always follow the recipe for the type of salt recommended by the author.
- A hair dryer? Greenspan said a hair dryer can be used on a springform pan to help it release the cake inside. It can also be used to loosen up a frozen cake glaze.
These bakers understand that life as a professional cook is not the same as being a home cook, but they insist that focusing on making treats is relaxing and rewarding.
If you're looking for a place to start, they recommended Chang’s Peppermint Kisses or Lemon Polenta Cookies from her cookbook "Pastry Love," or Greenspan's Holiday Bundt cake. Her latest cookbook is "Dorie's Anytime Cakes."
“Cooks can be bakers,” Greenspan said.
She and Chang have me thinking that maybe I can be a cook and a baker.
Happy holiday baking! And here's to good mental health in 2026, whether baking or some other method helps get you there.
