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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2044 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 15, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I wrapped up the latest season of the Great British Baking Show (/GBBO) this week and had some thoughts. In aggregate, the show isn’t remarkably different this season than others. The same tropes apply – the cohort all likes each other and thinks of themselves as a “family”, there’s an outro detailing post-show hangouts, etc.

After watching all the seasons on Netflix, I’ve become adept at picking up a couple of archetypes that appear each time. A combination of gender, age, and general appearance can get you far in guessing how far someone will make it throughout the show (though adding data from the first episode vastly increases accuracy). There are older folks who are just too tired, too shaky in the hands, too stuck in their ways to compete. The younger bakers that get too emotional or aggressive (in terms of ambition) fall by the wayside.

There was light CW fodder. The new host was a black woman, and a deaf participant required the use of a sign language interpreter during their tenure. We’ve discussed GBBO and the CW before – I have to say that I’m still satisfied that it hasn’t succumbed to the obvious cruft that you can see all the time in most shows. I quite enjoyed the new host, and the disabled competitor was, in fact, competitive.

My preferred method of watching these shows is light binging. I build up a queue before hopping on the train, timing my watching volume and cadence to where I watch ~4 shows per week and get to have the benefits of continuity without monotony. While I’m sure it’s been present in previous seasons, the tonal shift across episodes was obvious and welcome. Light, airy music to introduce the cast. A little bit of drama in the middle episodes. And by the last 3, darker and tenser background audio, the volume lowered to hear the bakers detailing exactly what they’re doing and why. More close-up shots of the delicate piping and frosting for each piece.

Interestingly, the finalists: were all white men who play sports. Their grimaces and focus during the last rounds of the competition were a contrast to what I'd seen before. I assume it's not what the show wanted to happen, but that's how the cookie crumbled. The winner ended up bucking my own bias and assumptions. Matty fits perfectly into the mold of "cheery young guy who doesn't take this seriously enough to deliver". But he did!

I was left with frustration that I haven't developed this skill. I consider myself an above-average cook, but still haven't been able to master the basics of consistency with waffles and biscuits. Learning baking is hard for many reasons, one of which is that what you're producing is so calorie dense and crammed with sugar you can't truly test your work or exercise it multiple times per week.

Anyone here successfully become a great baker? What did it take?

So, my insane baking hot take that drives people nuts, is that the phrase cooking is an art, baking is a science, is dead wrong. I can tell you exactly what a adding or removing a little of any ingredient will do to a given cookie dough by eye alone. It's just practice, reading up on the chemistry of food, and experimentation. Really getting skilled at cooking and baking takes 10-20 years. You can't really grind it unless you're running your own restaraunt or something and can feed your food to people, you just have to slowly learn over time. But if you keep at it, apply a critical eye to your own work, consume good food related content that expands your understanding of things like the maillard effect and how gluten effects dough, you will eventually get good at baking.

No, you right as hell.

You start with following the recipe exactly, measuring hydration, etc and so forth to get your eye in; then once you know what good feels and looks like you do that shit by eye.

Optimal results can never be achieved by measurement and recipe, because that recipe was written for 800 ft. of elevation at 30% humidity and 68 degrees; and you are at sea level 40% and 78 degrees, and that shit matters.

I'm so happy to encounter someone else who gets this! I don't know why so many people are afraid of baking, and act like it's an entirely different pursuit from cooking on the stovetop. The truth is that the popular perception is wrong twice: baking doesn't need to be as precise as people think, and other cooking benefits from more precision than people think.

For example: cakes. People are all intimidated by cake, acting like you need to be some kind of wizard to get it right, and that the best us mere mortals can hope for is to use a box mix. And while there are complicated cakes, the truth is that a basic cake is dead easy and takes no more time or effort than a box mix. You don't need to faff about with creaming butter, measuring by weight, sifting flour, folding the batter, or anything like that. Just measure all the ingredients into a bowl, grab an electric mixer (or by hand I guess but I'm lazy), and mix until the batter is fully combined. Pour into cake pans and bake. It's basically foolproof.

While I'm on the subject, I would like to say that I have seen few products that are a ripoff like box cake mixes. People buy them because they think it's easier or faster, but in truth it's neither of those things. Basic cakes are already easy (see previous paragraph), and the only time you save is the 30 seconds it takes to measure out flour/sugar/salt/baking powder, versus having everything measured for you. You can get an equally good, and often better cake by following a recipe from Betty Crocker or whatever. Yet the companies that make these mixes have somehow fooled people into thinking that they actually provide value, even though they don't provide any value at all. It's mind blowing.

People buy them because they think it's easier or faster, but in truth it's neither of those things. Basic cakes are already easy (see previous paragraph), and the only time you save is the 30 seconds it takes to measure out flour/sugar/salt/baking powder, versus having everything measured for you. You can get an equally good, and often better cake by following a recipe from Betty Crocker or whatever. Yet the companies that make these mixes have somehow fooled people into thinking that they actually provide value, even though they don't provide any value at all.

It depends on whether they bake in general or not.

If they keep flour, sugar, baking powder, butter, vanilla, a flavoring of choice, measuring cups and spoons, and an electric mixer on hand, then they probably already enjoy baking, and so, sure, bake a cake from scratch. If their toddler has stolen half their measuring tools, they do not have a flavoring they want, their flour has attracted rodents and been thrown out, they're mixing with a fork, and they're going to pour the concoction into a square pan because they bake cakes about once a year, then, yes, the cake mix is likely the difference between baking a cake and not baking anything at all. I think you underestimate how disorganized people's kitchens, lives, and minds are. I might buy a scone mix one of these days, mostly to remind myself that, yes, I like scones and am able to bake them. otherwise I buy cream for them and let it sit in the back of the refrigerator going bad for a month.

Yet the companies that make these mixes have somehow fooled people into thinking that they actually provide value, even though they don't provide any value at all.

I believe it might be self-sustaining at this point as people develop a taste for that specific brand (and ingredient source) of cake, much like how people continue to buy the same brand of beer in the face of alternatives (sours, etc.) that taste far better provided you're willing to suffer a mediocre experience once in a while.

What are you best at baking, would you say?

It's just practice, reading up on the chemistry of food, and experimentation.

This does more to justify it being considered a science than the vast majority of social science.

the phrase cooking is an art, baking is a science, is dead wrong…It's just practice, reading up on the chemistry of food, and experimentation.

Literature reviews, chemistry and experimentation certainly sound like science to me!

The phrase is usually used to mean that cooking is much more forgiving than a lot of baking, where a few extra minutes in the oven or too much mixing or not enough or not rolling things out exactly to the right thickness or not getting the flour butter ratio exactly correct etc etc can very quickly and easily ruin a recipe.

A lot of cooking, by contrast, allows for some experimentation and variation, and a little too much oil or butter or a couple minutes too long on the tomato sauce or the casserole isn’t usually as ruinous. You can decide that you feel like sauce that’s a little thicker or a batter with more pepper or add a little garlic and some tinned sardines into a tomato sauce where you also slightly increase the amount of oregano you use and all those changes are mostly immediately obvious and easy and predictable.

Most pro bakers use scales in their work even when making the same pastries every day, whereas even in professional kitchens in many cases chefs just eyeball things because minor fluctuations are irrelevant or can be fixed during cooking.

Most pro bakers use scales in their work even when making the same pastries every day, whereas even in professional kitchens in many cases chefs just eyeball things because minor fluctuations are irrelevant

This is just as true of baking. Minor fluctuations don't actually matter that much for most recipes. For example, when baking I always eyeball the shortening because I can't be arsed to clean out a measuring cup after measuring it. It's always fine. Similarly, there's no actual need to measure flour or sugar by weight. Even if your measuring cup isn't always the exact same amount because you don't perfectly level it, it's not going to matter. Lots of people even in the baking world feel like you have to be super precise, but you really don't.

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