An Original

So, the thing of it is, you take pleasure in cooking

and baking, a familiarity born of 70 years of marriage

and using your kitchen pantry as a laboratory as

would a chemist mixing various chemicals to observe

a predictable outcome and satisfy one's curiosity as

well as one's appetite, while feeding those your

food preparations are meant to please with the novelty

of surprise and the goal of good nutrition. You've

taken to photographing some of your concoctions

and featuring them on your social media account, on

occasion slipping in a simple recipe for uncomplicated

offerings, alternately mentioning just the ingredients

in the hope that seasoned cooks can interpret and modify

and prepare their own versions. What then, when

someone asks for a recipe for a more complex dish

one you've prepared so often that to you it is simple, yet

it is not to the uninitiated and you're left with a conundrum

how to respond. For there is no recipe, only a recitation

of ingredients and preparation. So you plunge into the

explanation with the hope that it will suffice to assuage

the curiosity of those for whom the process may confuse

and produce a recipe a seasoned baker would recognize:

There is no recipe. I've been cooking and baking for so long that I just know the ingredient combinations I want to use, and use my eye and texture to inform me. If you want to make the croissants whose photo I posted, try this:

Melt about 1/4 tsp.sugar in 1/2 c.warm water. Sprinkle a tbsp.yeast over and let it bubble and rise. Then add a spurt of olive oil, and grate about 1/2 to 1 c. Cheddar into the mixture. Add 1 tbsp. honey, along with 1 tbsp. powdered milk and 2 tbsp. sesame seeds.

Into this mixture add about a cup of whole wheat flour. If you want a lighter dough you can substitute half the whole wheat for plain white flour. Keep adding flour until the dough forms, a kind of sticky ball. Ladle out the dough onto a well-floured counter top and begin kneading it with the heels of your hands until it becomes smooth and is no longer sticky. Place the ball back into the bowl, cover it lightly with olive oil and set it aside, covered with a bowl top or saran wrap so it can rest and rise, about an hour.

You can also refrigerate it, covered, for a few days for later use if you like.

When you're prepared to make the rolls, flatten the ball with your hands and place it on a floured surface again, and with a rolling pin create a large circle. Smooth butter or margarine over the surface, sprinkle it with more sesame seed and/or a mixture of savoury herbs. Fold one third toward the middle and do the same with the opposite side. Roll it again, to a large, flat surface and repeat the butter/margarine treatment. Then fold over again. You should end up with a folded-over ball. Let it rest a half-hour. Then roll flat into a circle again. Cut the circle into six triangles. Roll each triangle from the wide end to the narrow, and twist each one in a crescent shape. Allow the crescents to rise again, about a half-hour.

Bake in a 350F oven for about 28 minutes, depending on how crisp you want them.

Sounds complicated perhaps, but if you do them and become accustomed to the method, it's really quite simple.

Hope that helps...