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Comment by eyelidlessness | Hacker News Reader

I’m surprised how something so basic as learning that baking recipes are ratios of mass makes me feel more comfortable and inclined to try baking than anything ever has before. It’s such a simple concept, and much more approachable to me than I’d expected before I clicked the link.

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> learning that baking recipes are ratios of mass makes me feel more comfortable [...] It’s such a simple concept

Yes. Almost all recipes get the presentation wrong by using a mix of units and fractions, e.g.:

    1 cup flour, sifted
    2/3 cup water
    1 tsp salt
    0.5 g yeast
    1 large egg

Same. I was pleasantly surprised by the simplicity of the math and the usefulness of it.

I've always thought of baking as a science and cooking as an art (although both are on a spectrum from art to science).

That’s basically how I thought of it too, but now I think I can kind of understand the science.

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