Baking has been around for thousands of years. The Egyptians were also pioneers in baking as the first recorded civilization to use yeast as long ago as 2600 BC. Since then baking has come a long way. New baking technologies have made baking available for the majority of the world. Whether it's for a bake sale, a religious service, or to just placate a hungry teenage girl, baking plays an important role in our lives.

Jessie Lufter has always had a love for baking. “I remember being five or six years old, sitting in my grandparents kitchen helping my grandpa make his famous chocolate chip cookies”, Lufter explained. Through the last 12 years, she’s learned through trial and error. From burning brownies to lacking the correct ingredients; Jessie has experienced all the ups and downs that come with becoming a baker. 

After spending hours in the kitchen Jessie has learned numerous tips; measure properly, use room temperature ingredients, use the handle of a spoon to push on the edges of your cookie right after taking it out of the oven to prevent hard edges. Lufter also explained that it isn’t what high quality ingredients or equipment you have, it's that, “You need to have a good skill set like time management, flexibility, multitasking and adaptability. Because you can’t expect a good outcome solely because you have the correct ingredients.”

Jessie later explained the tasks that were hardest for her to master, “A lot of times I don’t have the right ingredients at home or I'll find out that I bought the wrong kind of flour all too late.” She vividly remembers scrambling through her pantry looking for powdered sugar and only finding confectioners sugar. Sadly when she took the first bite of her warm cookie fresh out of the oven she was met with a horrible grainy texture, as if she were eating a handful of sand. Jessie also said, “Measuring is also difficult for me because sometimes I get sloppy, but when you bake you have to be exact,” 

In conclusion you won't be able to become a master baker overnight. Whether you're following an old family recipe or a recipe you found on pinterest you are bound to make mistakes but the best thing you can do is adapt and learn from them, and in time you will find joy in baking your own signature recipe.