Hi team,
I've started baking breads and cakes this year for the first time, partially as a result of some of the fantastic recipes CS has released. However, it’s highlighted one of the (many) gaps in my knowledge about cooking and has been bugging me so I thought I'd post and see if anyone has some ideas.
While the results of following baking recipes at CS and elsewhere have usually been great, I've often found myself missing the feeling of empowerment that comes with knowing the whys and hows, and that I’m now used to when cooking things like meat and vegetables.
CS has been so great at giving the community this knowledge, that in some ways I feel spoiled by resources like the SV time and temp guide, or by videos like Grant’s guide to selecting meat, or Decoding Tough and Tender Cuts which, in under a minute(!) gives you a way of approaching different cuts - and entirely different animals - intuitively, rather than on an animal-by-animal and cut-by-cut basis. Amazing!
But when baking I haven't developed the ability to look at, for instance, the CS date and toffee cake and intuit why it needs to be cooked to at least 82C (is this a temperature at which the starch has gelatinised and a crumb formed so it won't collapse, but low enough to avoid cooking too much moisture out of it? no idea), and why the temp differs from the chocolate cake recipe, where we’re aiming for 96C.
I imagine giving guidelines around complex and variable systems like baked goods is waaaay more difficult (or maybe doesn’t even matter in the same way!) than vegetables or cuts of meat because the possible proportions of moisture, fat, protein, sugar and everything else in a baked product, and their interplay, vary so much more than in a cut of meat. But if there is a better way of understanding or resource on what's happening when baking I'd love to know your thoughts. MC’s bread book out next year will obviously be an interesting read too.
And thanks CS for absolutely everything! Love everything you do.
*Disclaimer: just realised that after all that I broke the first rule and didn’t read McGee. I should read McGee.
