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Comment by cup-of-tea | Hacker News Reader

Baking is a surprisingly geeky thing to do. While cooking is more about knowing your ingredients and tasting as you go, baking absolutely requires strict adherence to a recipe.

I can't actually remember why I started baking bread. But when I first started the product was horrible. I would let the dough rise in a warm place and "make it big" as quickly as possible. For me the rising was just about CO_2 so it made sense. It took me a long time to realise that time is a crucial ingredient. You want the rise to take more time, not less. The difference is astonishing.

I never had much luck with sourdough but I actually prefer the taste of "fresh" bread anyway in the French style. Sourdough is in fashion right now but don't think using cultured yeast gives an inferior product!

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>baking absolutely requires strict adherence to a recipe

nonsense every recipe you know of started life as some cook mixing crap until "it seemed alright" before putting it in a an oven they gauged by hand, eye, or by how long it took to cook some sacrificial dough/food. then eyeballing the bread for when it was done.

Bread is especially forgiving, but this holds true for basically all baking too. Even as goddamned finicky as filo or puff pastry can be, they still come down to "yeah thats about right" far more than they do strict anything.

Yeah you can easily eyeball breadmaking and get something you can eat, not sure why it has this reputation. Making a cheese sauce is harder than making bread.

All that eyeballing and intuition comes from experience, though, which is experimentation and learning. That's a pretty geeky process in its own right. And if you're in a commercial bakery, the process is down to a science, with exact weights and temperatures and times. You can also do that at home, and if you do, the results do come out better (or at least more consistent).

Bread has this nice property of being both forgiving and playful, as well as highly optimizable with experimentation. Nice combo.

My bread has increased in quality so much by (a) mixing the ingredients (without the yeast, or with only a little bit of the sourdough starter) the night before (i.e. making a poolish), and (b) taking a full day to prepare: you knead a little, let it rest for a couple of hours, give it a few turns, rest, etc. As a result, the bread is much more flavorful, and the flavor is more delicate: not too sour, not too sweet, and you can chew it and feel the flavors develop.

My bread has much better flavor if I let the dough sit in the fridge for four days.

I do this also for time control. I can effectively bake whenever convenient if it's half dormant in the fridge.

Also, no need to knead with this method.

Good point. Mine gets stirred and warmed up in a bread maker for 45 minutes, then goes into the fridge. If I forget it sits there until I remember. Once risen it’s knocked back and put into a banneton to rise. Then into the oven. The move into the banneton is the only time I touch it before eating.

Oh? So you mix it and just stash it in the fridge for a while?

Yeah, I throw it in cold sometimes without much effort. I have some pales that I use to make a few loaves in bulk.

Better oven rise too, and over rise is the best kind.

I've tried chilling dough but I've found the yeast never fully recovers and just won't give the rise I want in the oven. It's been a source of frustration because everyone else says it works!

Maybe your refrigerator is colder than most.

Never had a problem with the rise even if I leave it in the fridge for 6 days. I also use much less yeast than the recipe calls for though.

> while cooking is more about knowing your ingredients and tasting as you go, baking absolutely requires strict adherence to a recipe.

I am not sure I agree (or maybe I don't understand).

It is fairly common to mix a dough and have a recipe step like "when it's smooth and doesn't stick" or "when the consistency is of a thick goo". Ambient humidity, what sort of surface you use for kneading, temperature of your leaving chamber or fridge, age of the yeast etc... all affect dosage and process, so you need the equivalent of "tasting" anyway, it's just that you check stuff with your hands rather than your mouth.

And the same ease applies to cooking: you can make an edible stew as easily as you can make an edible loaf of bread. It's just when you try to make harder/better stuff that you need to stick to a recipe (think: pate a bombe for tiramisù)

When presented with a selection of vegetables and other ingredients a good cook could make a nice meal by just making stuff up. Want a thicker sauce? Reduce it more, or maybe thicken with flour, it's up to you. You can just taste and adjust as you go.

You can't do that when baking. If you add too much liquid to a batter you can't just add flour to make it perfect again. You'll ruin the other ratios. You can't just bake it at any temperature in any sized pan for any amount of time. When it comes out will either be cooked or not. If you burnt the outside then it's ruined.

A good cook can consistently produce great meals without any recipes whatsoever. A baker cannot.

Ummm... contextually: this is incorrect for a bread baker.

You can totally bake bread without a recipe, and adjust while you go. You can check breads before they're done and let them bake longer. Maintain a rough 1:2:4 ratio of starter:water:flour, adjust hydration/process for the kinds of flour you use, and you can bake 'whatever' and have it be very tasty.

Bread making goes back stupid long in human history. 5,000 years of fermented breadmaking... Until very recently breadmaking was just a skill you learned from someone else who could do it, baked entirely by estimation, and transmitted that knowledge orally. Grandmas buns call for "enough" flour. The pros tell you to reserve flour/water until things look "right".

For other kinds of baking I don't really agree either... it's more about ratios and observation, though. If your batter is too thin you absolutely add more flour -- you just can't ignore the other agents in the bake. Temp and size will affect cooking times, but you can change those while baking. You check cakes to see if they're done before taking them out. You lower temps if you see edges darkening too quickly...

I mean, if you burn the outside of veggies they tend to be ruined too, and cooks use experience and trial & error to navigate the difference in the same way bakers do.

Excactly. You mentioned a good point. It's a different kind of taste simply. However you can replace the yeast in any regular recipe with sour dough.

I failed so many times. But usually there is a good explanation to why your baking failed. I love it, you really have to use your brain.

I started making bread for the first time in the last two months. 20 years ago I tried a few times, and it didn't ever work.

This time round I've had consistently good bread, rising well, and tasting good. It takes me 2-3 hours to make, which is a reasonable way to occupy myself on a slow afternoon while my toddler is having a nap.

My only real annoyance is that I've no idea what I'm doing differently these days that makes it work. I'll pretend that since I've moved countries the temperature/humidity is the key, but I genuinely have no idea!

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