Kim Ode
Greetings, bakers
I'm Kim Ode, and welcome to all things baking. Bread is my first love, but I'll explore all combinations of flour, sugar, eggs, yeast and butter at the drop of a spatula. Madeleines are my current pursuit, and I'm finding that these little shell-shaped cakes are perfect foils for a baker's imagination. Biscotti also are tempting my ingenuity in these days when I still want a sweet, but not always all the fat that usually hitches a ride.
All these are more are what we talk about beneath the wide awning of the Norse Baking Institute. Hey, I'm Norse, I bake and everyone should have an institute, right? Let me tell you more.
The NBI is, in many ways, a traveling conversation about baked goods. I regularly talk to groups about scratch baking, and love to demonstrate mixing and kneading bread dough, proper kneading being far more pivotal to your success than the often feared yeast. This year's presentations currently include a session at the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis, a baking class at Cooks of Crocus Hill in St. Paul, and a monthly cookbook review in Edina. More on all of that in a moment.
I've been baking all my life, learning from my mom in her South Dakota farm kitchen. When I was in 4-H. my sponge cake took the blue ribbon at the South Dakota State Fair. Some moments you never forget. But my way with cake was long ago outpaced by my love of bread. For several years now, I've been baking in a wood-fired brick bread oven that I built in my backyard, which involved mortaring together about 3,000 pounds of concrete, rebar and firebrick in a quest for the perfect loaf.
My day job is at the Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis, MN, where I write features about whatever catches my eye, as well as a regular column for the award-winning weekly Taste section.
I've baked with the pros in an industrial setting, helping turn out specialty loaves for European dukes and other visiting luminaries who know that man does not live by banquet chicken alone. And I've talked about bread to folks ranging from food professionals to audiences at the Minnesota State Fair. There's a resurgence of interest in scratch baking, from my generation that decided we need to regain some balance in our lives to my daughter's "skipped" generation that didn't learn because we didn't want them defining themselves by their stance at the stove.
Thankfully, what never got lost in all the social shifting was the pure joy of preparing something that tastes wonderful and sharing it with people we love. It's that simple, thank goodness. Which is what the Norse Baking Institute is all about.
Come see why.
Book About Kim Recipes Tips Classes Klecko Stirsby Bread Links
updated Oct 1, 2007