[andy_wrote]

I'm also a coder who has recently started attacking his kitchen incompetency! (but on the order of months ago, not years ago...) I prefer baking because I can rigorously follow directions in the worst case and get something acceptable, and because it feels a little alchemical and magical.

Something I wish recipes would discuss is "why do we do X?" or "what would happen if we did not do X here?" Like, say, the recipe calls for one teaspoon of salt. What if we added zero, or two? I think this is a little different from the pattern recognition discussed in the article.

These explanations would help beginners understand what is essential and what can be omitted (if necessary) or substituted. It would also foster creativity in the learning process. I don't want to experiment blindly and fail and have spent lots of time and effort on something inedible, especially given that I'm a novice who needs all the encouragement he can get. But if I understood the reasoning behind a particular step in the recipe, I'd be more willing to mess with it.

[mercer]

A friend of mine once remarked that I would probably love baking, and that I might want to start with that before I move on to cooking. Why? Because, at least according to him, baking is more like chemistry, where doing it right means doing things exactly right, whereas cooking is generally more improvisational and free-form. For 'programmer types' he figured the former would be easier.

I took his advice, and baked a really good cheesecake. I would like to say I was hooked and kept going, but I didn't. But it was the first time I started to see the fun of making food, and I'm sure I'll pick it up again soon.

[andy_wrote]

I agree with that distinction. Also, making food for many people is much more rewarding than making food for just yourself. (When I do the latter, it's lots of work for 5-10 minutes of payoff, and I often find myself wishing I'd ordered instead.)

Many baked goods are easy to toss in a box and bring to the office or to friends' places. You're not going to bring a tureen of polenta to work and tell your colleagues to dig in for a midday snack.

[vonmoltke]

> Many baked goods are easy to toss in a box and bring to the office or to friends' places. You're not going to bring a tureen of polenta to work and tell your colleagues to dig in for a midday snack.

A nine-pound pork butt on the other hand...

[germinalphrase]

"The New Best Recipe" by Cook's Illustrated Magazine is a great cookbook along these lines. Before each recipe (and scattered throughout for niche techniques) the authors spend two-three pages explaining all the different options they tried, what worked, and why some things failed.

I've learned a great deal about technique by reading these recipe forewords.

[pjmorris]

Alton Brown's 'Good Eats' television programs (now streamable) did a nice job explaining whys. His books are good too. 'Cooking For Geeks', mentioned in the thread is interesting here as well. Also consider Harold McGee's 'On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen'... chefs turn to it when they want to know why (until they start doing their own experiments, then you get Adria, Achatz, and folks like Nathan Myhrvold turning out 'Modernist Cusine').

[HeyLaughingBoy]

If you are looking for a book that does this (explains why things are done) with baked goods, I recommend The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. Hopefully it's still in print: I literally bought mine half my life ago.

[ksnicholas]

You might want to check out BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking by Shirley O. Corriher - the author is often featured on Alton Brown's Good Eats.

[ceratopisan]

The BakeWise book is excellent for the listing of principles - the ratios that work for higher-fat/sugar cakes, and so on. The recipes tend to be very sweet, and very wet - i.e. Southern U.S. desserts.

However, the book is poorly edited. Visually messy, with typos, repeated text, and odd text highlight passages that are right next to the exact words shown. It almost appears to be unfinished. There's lots of attention to the sweet cakes, but the bread section appears to be practically ghostwritten, with a lot of copy/pasted text.

Unfortunately, I haven't found a more scientific discussion of sweet desserts in book form. If you're looking to get better at straightforward bread production - Jeffery Hamelman's "Bread" is excellent, and goes very well into the science of the work.