Cheryl Strayed is the author of Wild, a memoir about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (#1 on the NYT bestseller list this week), and the advice-giver and meditator-on-life for the "Dear Sugar" column over at The Rumpus. Just this week, she published a new book called Tiny Beautiful Things, a collection of the best of Dear Sugar. In an interview with The Dictionary Project, a website that asks its subjects to free associate responses to dictionary definitions, Strayed had this to say about the word "sift":
As our own test kitchen staff posted a few years back, Strayed is pretty much right to question the wisdom of sifting. The only time it really makes a difference is if the recipe calls for a certain volume of "sifted flour," since the act of sifting changes the density of the powder. Just to be safe, Strayed preemptively apologized to the bakers out there on Facebook:
But we support her siftless convictions! Given how hard she's killing it in publishing, advice-giving, and living, she's probably fine on her own. But we've got her back.
[via The Dictionary Project]