As a former professional baker, nah.
Most of these home bakers talking about how “precise” their baking is aren’t actually that precise. They:
- measure ingredients by volume rather than weight
- have home ovens that vary in temperature wildly
- never consider ambient humidity/outdoor temp at all
Cooking and baking aren’t that different, there are hard and fast rules in both, but also if you’re good at one, you’re also good at the other, because they are the same thing. Can you follow a recipe that involves cooking meat in the oven? Then guess what? You can also bake a cake. I’m sorry to be the bearer of good news
I feel like this is the kind of opinion held by someone who has never worked with food professionally.
Grilling: FIRE!
Grilling is the superior method
Cooking: Heaven help you if you have a different version of known dish with a name. The gatekeepers will descend upon you.
Cooking is an art, baking is a science.
People complain about their baked goods not coming out right but they treat the recipe as a suggestion. That works for cooking (sometimes) but almost never for baking.
What you can fuck with in baking is vanilla. Douse to your hearts desire.
Ingredients I always ignore the amount given in recipes:
Garlic, lime juice, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, chocolate chips, raisins. There’s probably more.
Always more with garlic. Calls for “2-3 cloves” means at least half bulb. On spice, I’ll hold off if I’m cooking for others that can’t deal and just leave that on the side when serving.
It is technically possible to use too much garlic, but at that point you’re concerned about the amount of money being used to season a single item.
Oh I’m compassionate on hot spices, but if it’s just for me? GAME ON, LET’S SWEAT
Just scrape all the seeds into a mortar and pestle, grind them, throw the beans in some alcohol (rum, bourbon style Canadian whiskey, sherry), soak then leave them in a sugar bowl and save the sugar.
Now take the vanilla bean paste from your pestle and put it directly in my mouth.
This is how my S.O. make sourdough. It ALWAYS works🤷♂️
At least bread you can eyeball once you get enough practice at a specific recipe, a lot of it is about the moisture content which changes in the air from day to day so it’s never precise anyway
I hate myself and decided to get into Italian and BBQ smoking… Everything is done on a timeline with fine heat control and time does not care for you readiness. You really have to memorise and learn from experience before you can get to the level of autopiloting stress-free.
As a former line cook and a baker this is correct.
thats thr beauty of cooking. all those ingredients scribed so precisely benefit greatly from a liberal fudging
So true
Baking - scientific? With so scientific measurements like “cups” or “spoons”?
Grams-only recipe or no deal. Liquids, dry ingredient, all in grams.
Except eggs, they get a pass.
The dash at the end implying that there is also a secret fourth thing is just 🧑🍳🤌
Baking is just DIY organic chemistry.
