Many people ask me how I got started working with desserts, pastries, breads, homemade chocolates and other wonderful foods. Here’s a little look at how my love for my work all began.
Sugar Glaze Icing
Fried doughnuts were my favorite thing to eat in my grandparent’s bakery. Every summer we would spend weeks visiting them and every morning I’d come running down from their home up the stairs to the bakery below. I’d crash through the door, like any ten year old would heading straight to the left toward the wooden work table by the large corner sink.
Awaiting me there was the last batch of doughnuts, sitting and cooling on racks in a row. Sitting there next to those pastries I’d see the tub of sugar glaze icing just waiting for me. With the first doughnut in hand I’d admire its shape, the feel of its softness, the warmth on my skin. But enough of all that! I was just ten!
Down went my hand, nearly up to my elbow, in sugar glazed icing, the doughnut was drowned.
I soon raised my hand, the doughnut in grip, and reached high up over the rim of the tub. Down went my hand, nearly up to my elbow, in sugar glazed icing, the doughnut was drowned. Laughing and jumping I pulled it back out, wet sticky icing running over the pail, with more than a little on table and floor. Soon the doughnut emerged, shimmering and dripping, all warm and gooey, just too much to bear. I devoured that doughnut in one bite or two and smiled with a contentment, I haven’t known since.
Perhaps this is why I’m a baker today. For every once in a while, when no one is spying,
I drown my fresh doughnut, in sugar glaze icing!
-Bill Dietz
