Special Sauce: Dorie Greenspan Says, "Don't Start Baking With Your Sister's Wedding Cake"

[Photograph: Alan Richardson]

"Don't start with your sister's wedding cake," suggests baker and author Dorie Greenspan on this week's episode of Special Sauce. Greenspan has come far from the self-described "sweet little home baker" that she once was, and has a lot of advice for aspiring bakers who want to get their hands in the dough. She has written 11 cookbooks, won six James Beard Awards, and keeps up a popular blog, In the Kitchen & On the Road with Dorie Greenspan. Last month, shortly after she returned from France, Dorie and I spoke about what it took to first get her foot in the kitchen door—and what got her kicked out one month later.

Greenspan had always considered baking to be a significant practice. She'd spent years trying to figure out how to say that baking is important, even important enough to make baked goods their own food group. "But it isn't," she's realized now. "We bake for pleasure, we eat sweets for pleasure. There's no real reason for it, but we love it and it makes us happy." As we chatted, Greenspan shared what she still finds consistently enjoyable about her chosen field, and how she's built her career through travel, writing, and shameless indulgence in the baked goods she creates.

Also in this episode: the one thing both Greenspan and I would happily get fired for, plus the essential baking rule that Greenspan's husband didn't follow, and that almost got him choked. You'll learn about what sparked the "gorgeous flames" that burned down her childhood kitchen, and why she still considers baking failures to be valuable lessons.

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