baking: does it come easily to you?

I'm good at baking, but most people I've met irl that are bad at it really just don't follow directions, or are like LL's work friend and think Cool Whip is heavy whipping cream or whatever. It really is all about following the directions word for word. The "baking is a science" thing is not an entirely true statement, but there is a lot of science that is fundamental to baking and it's very important to know the role of each ingredient and not just go "Well I'm on a low salt diet so I skipped the salt, but I can't figure out what I did wrong." Beyond that, there is a lot of technique involved, but if you start with some basic recipes it's pretty simple stuff.

I tried to get into the "bake by weight, not volume!" camp for a while but realized that it doesn't make that huge of a difference; I go by the scoop-and-level method and it works out just fine. As long as your flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, baking powder etc adhere to an approximate ratio you should be OK.

If I learned how to make really lemony poundcake I WOULD EAT SO MUCH POUNDCAKE so it's better that I don't know.

salty brownies for me -- i've made a wide array of cakes and stuff like that. this is fun flavorful baking imo.

the kind of baking i don't like is "it took half a day and made a huge mess for me to eat this piece of bread and then watch it get stale before my eyes because no two people can eat that much bread that fast and no one wants your gift of partially stale bread" baking, ie a waste of my time/energy.

desserts and savory pies are worth time and energy. y'all can have the rest.

are calzones/empanadas/pasties "baking"? that's the kind of baking i enjoy.

I'm a good cook for the most part, but several recent experiments with yeast breads were all flops. I don't mind buying store bread, but it was disappointing when the panettone didn't work--that stuff is NICE for breakfast.

I'm considering trying one of the no-knead bread recipies floating around the internet. Yet simultaneously I'm thinking MAYBE I should be cutting back on starches. Well, I contain multitudes (which is the problem that has me thinking maybe I should give up starches).

There was a while when I was being really good about making a lot of cookie dough and freezing it in tube shapes, rolled up in plastic wrap & foil, and then slicing off cookies like 8 at a time so I could have fresh ones every few days. That was pretty smart.

tbf i haven't really tried to bake enough to determine if i'm actually any good at it but it does not feel like it comes naturally to me

I have one really good no-knead bread recipe; I'll try to remember to post it when I get home. But I have tried a few others that were disappointing.

Homemade bread is for when you are having guests for dinner and want the house to smell wonderful! Otherwise, yeah, way too much bread.

I can only barely remember homemade doughtnuts and I have never really longed to deep-fry anything else in the food world, but I would eat homemade doughnuts until I felt sick.

There's some good, easy bread recipes in the tassajara bread book -- I think it was recommended to me from ilx in the first place. I like baking and it isn't something I have had many problems with. It's omelets that I'll never get right.

I'm very, very good at bread but pretty shit at anything else. We almost never buy bread anymore. I just made two loaves of a great honey oatmeal bread last night! (Having a KitchenAid mixer w/a dough hook is key here btw.)

YES. I was lucky enough to get the industrial grade motor KitcheAid mixer and it does a lot of the work for you. I don't think I'd really enjoy baking much if I didn't have it, because my arthritis makes it painful to do all of that mixing and kneading by hand.

I'm a good enough cook and love baking. Have given up on grains though so I only bake two or three times a year, usually scratch cakes and fruit crisps/cobblers. I was baking all our bread until a few years ago, and made some really nice loaves.

Misread this as 'barking'.

I am a good cook, because I have practiced it almost daily over many decades, and the process of cooking interests me. I hesitate to say I stink at baking, but I have never pursued it and can claim no more than a very basic proficiency. I'm pretty sure I could raise my baking a couple of notches, if I were to put in the required effort.

Misread this as "banking". I am an ok cook/ok baker, though I bake only occasionally and have never tried making bread.

i am a terrible banker, however

TS: baking vs. banking vs. barking vs. braking

barking comes really easily to me, that's an easy yes

really feeling the people itt talking about not liking to follow recipes. i made pistachio muffins yesterday, they were maybe the most successful thing i've ever baked, but my friend really had to rein me in, put measuring cups in my hands. who doesn't love the cavalier oil drizzle, the impulsive transfer of ingredients from their container to the bowl. i feel spoiled by cooking, too; when you cook you mainly cook with things you understand, whereas it's hard to attribute the same kinds of value to things like flour that you wouldn't eat independently. they are more like numbers than ingredients. i always thought it was like the difference between drawing & painting; drawing is so immediate, from your eye to the page, but painting involves a lot of counterintuitive moves, wanting red but knowing you need to paint brown first. baking is really confusing. i know there are comforting dimensions, cool techniques you get to get into like pestle & mortaring, kneading, &c, but i think some of the satisfaction i get from cooking is from feeling like all of the things i did worked out, & that's toned down when you have to obediently follow a recipe so it doesn't screw up.

see I get the opposite comfort from following a good baking recipe, for me it's like having a reassuring, confident voice to get you through the weird parts, so you don't second guess yourself. i'm kinda particular about who I bake with now - ie america's test kitchen can gtfo with their needlessly complicated baking shenanigans.

who doesn't love the cavalier oil drizzle, the impulsive transfer of ingredients from their container to the bowl.

hah, i don't

i love baking and i guess at this point it comes fairly easy/naturally to me, i used to pester my grandma and mom into helping them bake stuff when i was a kid. but yeah i like having a recipe to follow because i like checking stuff off of lists, what can i say. i'm a bit freer in cooking admittedly.

me flamboyantly catapulting hastily grasped fistfuls of ingredients into pans against the ambient noise backdrop of sizzling onions is one of my real Joys Of Cooking, i am really insistent on this sensation existing at the heart of any kitchen experience i go out of my way for

donna otm: lists! <3

on the contrary, schlump quite otm *plays bridge*

in our house, in general I'm the cook and my wife is the baker. it works out pretty well.

im a virgo btw

but yeah schlump also otm about freewheeling cooking, that is a fun thing too! I guess i like both worlds

i'm a virgo too! different moon signs, apparently.

lol so is my wife, the list thing is so true

what does it mean if i am an aries who likes lists

that you will be a most excellent baker :)

:D

Virgos are prone to believing in astrology iirc

iirc the more you believe in astrology the likelier you are to stay one

i'm awesome at cooking but i don't like to bake. i don't enjoy measuring and i can eat so many cookies that it's better for my health if i don't bake.

i am a sagittarius (but really an "ophiuchus" if nu-astrology is anything to go by) so i don't like following rules.

i am a vegetarius, i think it makes cooking less complicated

I don't bake. I love cooking, but I rarely eat bread, cakes &c., and baking is much more boring than cooking, like mail order vs browsing in a shop.

who doesn't love the cavalier oil drizzle, the impulsive transfer of ingredients from their container to the bowl

noooooo

chills down spine thinking about being made to do this. HOW MUCH IS A "DRIZZLE"? if you don't tell me exactly how much, how am i meant to know when to stop?

impulse has no place in cooking because everything will assuredly go disastrous if it does.

I enjoy both cooking and baking.

haha. i mean no offense to you or my sis but you sound exactly like my sister (i.e. must follow recipe to the "t" and offer no creativity or common sense.
was making the dough for some vegan sweet potato pecan breakfast rolls for her and niece the other week and when she saw how i was doing it she kinda started to flip. i asked her how they came out and she said "awesome". i'm not impulsive with baking but i've done it enough so i know what a tsp or tbslp of something looks like w/out always measuring. and it's a science but not rocket science. and just 'cuz something is in print somewhere as a recipe doesn't mean that it will always make sense.

oh, sorry, xpost to lex

lex's difficulties with cooking are well-documented on ilx and no further amount of posting is like to make him warm up to the concept

it's like coaxing dame barbara cartland into a pair of levi's

I must confess I get stressed out by a pinch of anything

i think i find cups more troublesome. some cups are twice the size of other cups.

Lol, tbf when I was a kid mum always talked in dashes and dabs and dollops, drove me barmy.

Pinches are fine. Trying figuring out if a dash and a bit and a shake are 3 diff measurements or the same thing

I like "a knob of butter" and would measure everything in knobs if possible