
You have to follow the recipe - danso
https://theoutline.com/post/8307/follow-recipe-baking-thanksgiving
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Smaug123
Much of the art of [non-professional] cooking, in my view, lies in knowing
what must be rigid and what need not be. Baking is a science, relying on
precise chemical reactions that must happen within pretty tightly defined
windows. Making a curry is not a science, in that you can get a good curry by
just making it up on the spot, tasting as you go, and fixing it if it needs
fixing. (Maybe following a recipe precisely will get you the best results, but
you can get most of the way there with just a few rough signposts; nothing
will go disastrously wrong if you shake things up a bit.)

One of the things I found most annoying about watching someone trying to teach
someone else how to cook (while at uni) was that the teacher never pointed out
when something didn't matter. Whether it was "now you put in 1.5tsp of salt to
the sauce" or "now you put in 1.5tsp of yeast to the dough", the method was
presented as unyielding. In fact the sauce can be made in infinite variety,
while the dough must be made just so. Know when to yield to the expert, and
know when not to bother.

~~~
kranner
> Making a curry is not a science, in that you can get a good curry by just
> making it up on the spot, tasting as you go, and fixing it if it needs
> fixing.

Or it may be that the standard for curry in this example is lower than the
standard for bread, perhaps because there is no set expectation for the taste
of curry -- maybe one has it much less often and is less familiar with it --
while bread is something one has almost everyday and expectations are higher.

As an Indian, we don't even call any of our dishes 'curry'. They are all
specific dishes with very specific tastes. If you're making a Rajma Masala, or
a Punjabi kadhi, or a Gujarati kadhi, or a Khadi Dal, or a Shahi Paneer: it's
very easy to screw them up and in most cases you wouldn't be able to fix them
after one mistake. You might make a good enough something, but it wouldn't be
Rajma.

~~~
sombremesa
I can't tell you how many times I've tried to make dal makhani like Moti Mahal
(Deluxe) does and it always comes out wrong. Definitely a science (there are a
lot of ingredients that must emulsify just so, the spices must retain their
bite, it must simmer and reduce for hours, etc.), and it's ridiculous how many
different "dal makhani" recipes there are and they almost never taste remotely
alike.

~~~
jatins
Ha, I feel the same way about Biryani. You can eat a Biryani at N different
places, and no two taste alike.

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Syzygies
With forty years experience cooking and some formal training, I'm much more
comfortable experimenting with procedures and the technical aspects of a
recipe, than with creative flavor combinations.

To be honest, I don't believe that creative flavor combinations often work,
even in a $100 restaurant. It's the height of arrogance for an individual cook
to believe that they possess genius exceeding the crowd-sourced collective
imaginations of an entire people. And actually believing one "needs" to do
something different, to make one's mark? It's hard to be a good cook, but it
takes the barest modicum of emotional control and self-awareness to avoid
falling into this trap. Just don't.

As in mathematical or scientific research, one is actually most creative and
original when one is channeling with clarity what everyone else meant to say,
wanted to say but didn't know it. In cooking, the hardest thing to do is to
express a classical recipe using modern methods and ingredient sourcing,
better than an entire people had managed before with conventional methods.
Either this is too hard for elite restaurant chefs, so they instead play with
their food, or there's no market, because one has to be on the same level to
taste the difference? I don't believe that; perfecting the thoughts of others
is the ultimate challenge.

Baking is easy. I have a spreadsheet going back fifty versions for sourdough
bread ground from whole grains. It's a careful search algorithm in a high
dimensional space, not cooking. Corn tortillas from scratch, via nixtamalizing
and grinding landrace Oaxacan corns from masienda.com, is an ultimate baking
graduation exercise. There's much conflicting information out there, but no
reference recipe that guarantees success at home. Within a month one is at the
research frontier for home cooks in a modern setting. One needs to be
comfortable with research, not with following direction. And the results can
be as truly spectacular as anything one can produce in a home kitchen.

~~~
GordonS
> Baking is easy

Hmm, not for everyone!

I'm a competent cook (self taught, cooking for 20 years or so), and at home
cooking western dishes, as well as thise from around the world (Chinese,
Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, all sorts), yet baking is the one thing I
seem to find difficult.

Firstly, it seems you have to get your measurements right - there isn't much
room for experimentation with quantities, just follow the recipe. Aside from
that, my mixture/dough always seems too wet, too sticky, too dry, too
_whatever it shouldn 't be_! And I don't seem to have the knack for how to fix
it, or an intuition to know when it's "right". Same deal when it makes it to
the oven; things often end up over or under baked, because I just don't have
the knack of knowing when it's done.

~~~
hansthehorse
Weigh your ingredients. Get a scale that is accurate to the gram and if your
recipe calls for cups and such find a conversion chart. I only follow recipes
that give amounts in grams and milliliters. I'm American and baking is the
only time I use the metric system. 90% of baking is technique and that only
comes from practice so taking notes can help a lot while learning.

~~~
GordonS
I do, and don't really have a problem with weighing things; my point was
simply that I feel like I can't experiment. But you're probably right about
needing practice - I tend to feel like I've failed when it goes wrong, and
don't try again for ages.

I'm British, so always use grams/millilitres when cooking - TBH, I wouldn't
even know what "a cup of flour" was!

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MrGilbert
Heavy imho: My girlfriend and I cannot cook together. She‘s more of the
freestyle type, while I like to follow the recipe (programmer here). My
reasoning is simple: Someday, someone tried the recipe and came up with a good
way of achieving what we are trying to achieve. Which doesn‘t mean you should
never alter it. But that‘s a task for another time, and shouldn‘t be performed
while you are expecting guests. :)

~~~
JustSomeNobody
We have a rule: make the recipe exactly like it’s written the first time.
After that we can experiment.

~~~
wccrawford
I follow this rule when making new food, and when trying new food. I will
typically order something from the menu directly when at a new restaurant, but
if I come back I'll make changes.

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esotericn
I always found it strange that in school our 'food technology' course focused
on baking and not normal cooking.

Baking, aside from maybe bread or pizza bases or something, is basically pure
luxury, whereas cooking is actually useful.

I can probably count the times I've baked in the last few years in the single
digits.

If you put too much flour in a cake it's going to ruin the consistency,
potentially be too dry, whatever.

If you put "too much" spice or oil or vegetables or whatever in a curry or
casserole or soup it's just going to taste different. It's quite hard to make
a meal that's not serviceable on the hob.

~~~
wccrawford
On the other hand, if you can bake, you can cook. Cooking is the same thing,
but a _lot_ more relaxed on requirement to follow directions.

If you're teaching something, you might as well teach something that tells the
student they were wrong, instead of hiding their mistake.

~~~
erikpukinskis
This doesn’t ring true to me. As a bread baker I’ll just do the same recipe
1000 times, watching YouTube videos week after week, practicing different
techniques, seeing if tiny variations in technique, weather, etc, affect the
end product.

That’s completely different from cooking, which is about learning to Google,
evaluating whether to trust a recipe, menu planning, seasonal ingredient
management, knowing the personalities of the people you’re cooking for,
understanding a wide range of cuisines... it feels like a fully different
activity.

And being able to follow the recipe isn’t really the key to either. It’s the
price of admission.

~~~
codyb
I can cook at this point, self made recipes and sauces and delicious foods.

But I find google (or ddg in my case) to be shit for finding recipes.

Too many results, lots of filler content about someone’s grandma and yada yada
yada.

These days I just pick up a few well rated cookbooks (or I receive them as
gifts) and go from there.

Let someone else do the curation, it’s very rarely the fun part of cooking,
and I enjoy cookbooks because they have recipes for things I wouldn’t have
thought to even look up.

Plus, there’s something very calming to me about looking through a cookbook.
Maybe it’s the same for others.

Cooking and baking shows are similar. It’s just hard to be stressed watching
someone make food.

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toomanybeersies
This implies you're using the same ingredients with the same attributes as
what the recipe designer used.

For instance, that your baking powder has the same "power" as what the
original creator used, or that your flour has the same gluten content.

Ingredients vary by brand, and if you're in a different country, can be quite
different (for instance, the majority of cream in Australia has added
gelatin).

~~~
gyuserbti
I came here to say something similar. You're right to point out baking powder,
because it's a mess. Think it's all the same chemically? Nope. Different
brands use very different chemicals that can affect lift, and it can vary over
time for the same brand.

Just about everything is like that. Whole wheat flour? Different bran and
gluten percentages create really different loaves.

Pretending weights will solve everything is nonsense too. If humidity affects
mass per volume, it's going to affect chemical identity per mass too.

Finally, everyone has different tastes. You might like a finer crumb to your
bread; your spouse might like it more holely.

Recipes are like guidelines. Always. Experience matters because it reflects
knowledge of how variations on the recipe matter.

Finally, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that a lot of things in
cooking get passed down as critical when they're not, or even worse, are
detrimental. This goes for traditional knowledge handed down, as well as half-
baked "scientific" approaches to recipe development that are bad science and
driven by a desire to establish authority above all.

------
phyzome
> You can control what is going on in a pan on a stove in a way you cannot
> behind a closed oven door.

To use a missile metaphor: Stir-fry is guided, bread is ballistic.

------
JustSomeNobody
Great post! Reading recipe reviews on sites like AllRecipes is both
frustrating and annoying. Most times you will see something like “5 stars!!! I
loved this recipe. I changed these four ingredients and it was amazing!” And I
just think, you didn’t actually make the recipe!!!

------
dqv
Not following the recipe risks experiencing recipe anxiety: the fear that you
are going to eat something gross. Ok, maybe it only applies to me, but I
actually am scared about not following the recipe.

My husband modified a recipe to make it easier to read, but in doing so had
also corrected a "mistake". He's not a pastry chef. He changed the butter
cream recipe from "until the syrup is at 238 degrees" to "until the syrup is
at room temperature". It wasn't too bad, but it was off. I got upset when I
realized the modified recipe differed from the original.

~~~
phonypc
I'm surprised it turned out at all. Cooking syrup to a specific temperature
serves to produce a syrup of specific concentration, i.e. ratio of
sugar:water. So under-cooked syrup ends up containing a lot more water than
desired, as well as not being hot enough to cook and stabilize the egg whites
that are presumably in the buttercream recipe.

~~~
dqv
The texture was... lumpy

------
auggierose
Some recipes are just substandard and don't work. Can somebody provide me with
a WORKING recipe for making ORIGINAL injera bread? Preferrably working at
Edinburgh altitude.

~~~
CPLX
This may be the only reliable one I’ve seen:
[https://www.ethiopianairlines.com/gr/book/trip/flight-
schedu...](https://www.ethiopianairlines.com/gr/book/trip/flight-schedule)

~~~
auggierose
hahaha

------
bitwize
You gotta do your cooking by the book:
[https://youtu.be/ZD71JeX4Vk0](https://youtu.be/ZD71JeX4Vk0)

------
starpilot
The best thing that improved the consistency of my baking was better
measurement. I started weighing my ingredients, as Cook's Illustrated found
the mass of a cup of flour varied by as much as 15%. I bought a separate
thermometer for my oven because I didn't trust its built-in thermocouple.
After this, I never had bad batches of cookies.

~~~
lanius
I wish more recipes specified ingredients by weight instead of volume.

------
TuringTest
_> the second best cooking movie after Big Night_

This pal hasn't watched "Babbete's Feast".

------
smitty1e
And how was the recipe followed prior to its existence?

~~~
Smaug123
Before the existence of the recipe, skilled practitioners had their own
folklore, built from decades or centuries of trial and error and experience.
Now, anybody can simply copy a recipe and inherit that experience, no matter
how skilled.

It takes skill and/or time and effort to discover a recipe in a field like
baking, where the desired chemical reactions are fragile and easy to disrupt.
The message of the post is: don't try and discover recipes in difficult fields
like baking, unless you know what you're doing.

~~~
phyzome
> don't try and discover recipes in difficult fields like baking, unless you
> know what you're doing.

Or unless failure is an option! (And ideally, you're at least writing down
what you did.)

------
flavor8
That's a terrible article. Improvising is half of the fun of cooking. Once you
learn some basic principles there's a lot of room for modification of what
you're doing. Granted that baking is less forgiving than e.g. pan dishes
(where you can sample and adjust), but even baking is not some unobtainable
mystery.

~~~
tchaffee
Two friends who are pro bakers will make small adjustments based on the
outside humidity, how much gluten they can feel in the flour and so on. Baking
to high levels of quality _and_ consistency is actually very hard and requires
precise measurement. The article rightly educates folks on some of the
factors.

~~~
flavor8
OK great, that's pro bakers who are presumably selling what they're producing,
and need 100% consistency. I make bread weekly, and it turns out great weekly
(for our home consumption). I'm constantly experimenting with different
balances of whole wheat and white, different brands of flour, different
amounts of leaven, different percentages of hydration, etc. If I hadn't
experimented I wouldn't understand bread as well as I do. Dough, like pan
cooking, is very forgiving if you understand what you are looking for.

"Follow the recipe" is an awful philosophy. Learn the recipe and then
improvise is much better, because it helps you understand the domain much more
significantly.

~~~
tchaffee
You're still missing the point that baking is far less forgiving about getting
measurements wrong. No one is saying you shouldn't experiment and learn if you
want to. The point is that you should be prepared to witness just how delicate
some of the chemistry is. It's not pan cooking, where extra carrots won't
matter at all.

~~~
flavor8
That's exactly what I said in my initial comment.

~~~
tchaffee
You didn't say people should be prepared for how delicate the baking chemistry
can be. The article said that. And you called the article terrible.

