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Comment by flavor8 | Hacker News Reader

That's a terrible article. Improvising is half of the fun of cooking. Once you learn some basic principles there's a lot of room for modification of what you're doing. Granted that baking is less forgiving than e.g. pan dishes (where you can sample and adjust), but even baking is not some unobtainable mystery.

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Two friends who are pro bakers will make small adjustments based on the outside humidity, how much gluten they can feel in the flour and so on. Baking to high levels of quality and consistency is actually very hard and requires precise measurement. The article rightly educates folks on some of the factors.

OK great, that's pro bakers who are presumably selling what they're producing, and need 100% consistency. I make bread weekly, and it turns out great weekly (for our home consumption). I'm constantly experimenting with different balances of whole wheat and white, different brands of flour, different amounts of leaven, different percentages of hydration, etc. If I hadn't experimented I wouldn't understand bread as well as I do. Dough, like pan cooking, is very forgiving if you understand what you are looking for.

"Follow the recipe" is an awful philosophy. Learn the recipe and then improvise is much better, because it helps you understand the domain much more significantly.

You're still missing the point that baking is far less forgiving about getting measurements wrong. No one is saying you shouldn't experiment and learn if you want to. The point is that you should be prepared to witness just how delicate some of the chemistry is. It's not pan cooking, where extra carrots won't matter at all.

That's exactly what I said in my initial comment.

You didn't say people should be prepared for how delicate the baking chemistry can be. The article said that. And you called the article terrible.

It's like grammar. Once you know the rules, you can break them to good effect.

But if you lack the basic ability to follow the rules, you're just a bad cook.

It doesn't say anything about "unobtainable mystery". Rather it says the opposite, that anyone can bake.

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