[steveBK123]

Counterpoint - I think a lot of people (STEM especially) get hung up on precision in cooking. Baking - yes, its chemistry and precision matters.

But cooking? You very well may need varying ratios of ingredients, to taste, depending on size/freshness/variety of the produce you are using in a recipe. Or simply your mood.

Whatever tomatoes grandma was putting into a marinara 50-100 years ago are nothing like the varieties you are going to find at the grocery, farmers market or your garden today anyway.

[dmd]

My grandmother's index cards are nearly all for baked goods, and they're all useless. It'll call for "a small pile of soda" or "eggs" (no number, just "eggs"). The cookie recipe I loved growing up turns out to list no quantities at all EXCEPT ... "2 eggs OR add more flour" which ... makes no sense whatsoever. Maybe she was trolling us?

[steveBK123]

If you want to understand baking chocolate chip cookies and the result of varying ratios of ingredients there are a few guides like this-

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/packages/baking-guide/co...

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jesseszewczyk/buzzfeed-foods-best-c...

[lotsofpulp]

I hate baking because precision isn’t sufficient to make the quality of food my mom makes, who has tens of thousands of hours of experience. She bakes by look, feel, smell, and even though I wrote down very specific instructions, I can hardly get my product to match up.

[bobthepanda]

Baking is about precision but it’s not just limited to the recipe. The recipe may need to be adjusted based on temperature, humidity, cooking appliance, altitude (if you live in different locations.) Heck, ingredients like flour are not necessarily standardized across brands or region.

Tasting/feeling as you go and adjusting is probably one of the most important bits of cooking or baking.

[jasonjei]

Yes… It’s even crazier with bread baking. While cakes and cookies are generally the same everywhere with the exception of high altitude baking, bread baking is some of the trickiest skills to master.

For example, hydration of the dough will dictate the final outcome of the bake. Every flour hydrates differently depending on protein, ash content, milling, and so on. So even if a recipe calls for generally 70% hydration, it may be more or less depending on the “feel” of the dough if you switch flours. Croissant dough detrempes need to be hydrated at a very low percent, generally under 60%. The flakiest croissants tend to be made with a very dry stiff dough hydrated at 50%.

And beyond the choice of flour—temperature (proofing, desired dough temperature), climate, kneading/mixing, yeast or wild starters, salt will drastically change the substance of the bread.

We haven’t even talked about gluten formation (especially with regard to autolyse and dough folding) and fermentation techniques… and how the raw dough is loaded into an oven and at what temperatures (deck, convection or fan-assisted, with humidity, Dutch oven, etc).

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Precision in baking is overrated unless you're a factory.

Every loaf of bread I bake probably tastes slightly different, and that's just fine according to the people eating it. If I'm baking a cake, or cookies and at the last minute, I discover that I'm out of something important, I just figure out a substitute and it turns out (usually!) just fine.

Far more important than precision is understanding how various ingredients will react with each other and compensating.