Science and Baking

This is possibly the most random topic I will ever blog about, but I just wanted to point something out.

Baking is possibly the least precise practice on the planet.

I laughed at myself just rereading that sentence now, but I think about it every time I make food from a recipe. I find it hard to reconcile the baker in me with the ex-science-olympian. How can I put any trust into a measuring system that insists that every recipe on the planet uses the same intervals of flour that are so different from one cup to the next? If measurements mattered in the baking world, then you would have things like “recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups 3 tablespoons and 1 teaspoon of flour at [this amount] of density” instead of “recipe calls for 2 cups of flour.”

Anyway, there you have it. Also, this is why I laugh at people who measure anything larger than a tablespoon by scraping the extra off the top.

Triumph

Tonight, just as I was walking into my room I heard the Satan alarm
start to go off and I realize that I’m at that moment not in bed, not
almost asleep, and that all the lights are on–three things that have
never been the case before when the devil alarm has gone off. So, I
utilized my mobile status and found the demon watch and turned off the
horrible, horrible alarm. Finally. Triumph.