How to Create a Dedicated Baking Station

You're welcome:). Don't forget to consider whether you typically wear shoes when cooking & how high they are.

I suspect the demise of the pantry coincided with the astronomical profitability of marketing "furniture quality" kitchen cabinetry. A well designed and well positioned pantry (not just ANY pantry) affords cooks with greater storage capacity and flexibility and with greater convenience in far less space, and at far far less cost, than do conventional cabinets - not to mention CUSTOM cabinetry. Pantries provide a clean space removed from kitchen traffic dirt where shallow open shelving allows quick location and one motion retrieval of items. Cabinetry designed to support working depth counter tops can offer only a poor imitation of this convenience through the use of costly drawers, pullouts, and multi-fold-out "pantry" shelving - meanwhile sacrificing one motion retrieval. Can you imagine anyone purchasing an automobile that would require opening of 2 or three overlapping doors to access the passenger compartment? Yet cooks routinely put up with this nonsense by first opening a door so they can pull out a drawer (if they are lucky) so they can retrieve an item located behind 4 other unlike items - or items piled into the drawer. This is not design. This is craziness. We have sacrificed usefulness - GOOD design - for artifice. No wonder people cook less and less each decade.

The use of a butcher block table as a baking center in a kitchen provides a wonderful height work surface for most cooks of average height. Fit it with sturdy but appealing legs, top with tablecloths stored nearby, and it will not be seen as a work surface but as a dining table when need be. Dual purpose is a necessity in Europe and most metropolitan areas world wide. We are SO far behind in our unimaginative and inflexible use of interior space.

Ottolino: As a kitchen & bath designer in San Francisco who doesn't sell cabinetry, I agree that a walk in pantry is great, but it isn't always possible. And when it is possible, it is often just outside the kitchen and/or not close to the prep area. While there are expensive custom cabinet options, there are also more moderate custom & semi-custom options. Pantries typically also have a door, so combining that with needing to walk to the pantry doesn't always provide more convenience than having drawers or even roll out shelves for storage of items near their point of use. Roll out shelves & drawers can also provide more storage than fixed shelves because you don't need to allow space for reaching over other items.

Custom cabinets from a local custom shop can be more or less than cabinets from a manufacturer due to less people in the supply chain & less shipping among other factors.

Good ideas from Europe may get here a little later, but they are generally available. If someone wants to spend the extra money for European cabinets, there are dealers in the US. Or many of those ideas can be incorporated using European cabinet accessories.