Between the five years

When I was a little boy say around five, every thing which comes out of oven in round crisp consistency is Biscuits to me, I have never come across the word Cookies for another fifteen years. Later in my under graduation during a training time with a popular bakery in Coimbatore, I had my first encounter with cookies, The variety in preparing and the different styles of it made more lavish, I would call it a Sumptuous bake. I practiced the art of rounding the dough and piping the batter for the umpteenth time, forgetting that the measurement is the main soul of baking.Then my twenty year old mind didn't care much about recording the recipe in a written form and... that was then.

Much later, that is after another five years, I had the best opportunity to record the recipe, that was when the tsunami came in Chennai, Unexpected , same like our unexpected time in a very popular bakery in Chennai, Say our work starts at midnight and winds early morning, then the twenty five old mind of mine looked the commercial part of baking, forgetting the inner soul - the measurement.

Today after Five year, witnessing batches of batches of cookies prepared in our department for the Diwali fest, is a kind of nostalgia. wondering what relation between cookies and Diwali, there are too many answers , but the best thing is to keep wondering. We had five varieties of cookies, starting from Choco chip, choco nut, cherry, Masala and the last Salt. Everything has its own character, and texture. I happily saw the students of the final year working with the dough, without any resentment . I saw great master chefs in them , and Wonderful team leaders in them.

wishing them good luck, I pestered them to make note of the measurement, because I don't want them to wait another five days or five years. If measurement seems very complicated , its simple to use the bakers percentage, that will make things easier, to remembered or at least to record.


Bakers percentage = total weight of Ingredient/ total wt of flour X 100

The weight of flour in all the recipe is 100%

For example a recipe calls for
Flour = 200 gms = 200/200X100 = 100 %
sugar= 30 gms = 30/200X100 = 15%
Butter= 50 gms =
salt 10 gms=


more on cookies in the next post..
happy baking,