I once heard of someone being asked "do you cook" as a quite serious question during her university admissions interview.
OK, I admit it, I've been baking recently. Stove-top cooking is fun, it's bucket chemistry. Just add here, withhold there, alter proportions at will. No problems, no explosions. Baking is different, much more like "real" science. Precise measurements, amounts, times and temperatures. You don't add more Taq to the PCR because you think it will cook "better", or double the annealing temperature because it will make the reaction go twice as quick, you'll just end up wasting $10 of reagents and a morning's work. And hopefully not a really difficult sample to get hold of. You see the analogy. Maybe that's why baking feels so nice, so homey, so comforting.
Anyway, baking can also be misunderstood, so I present not a sock (I have no baking socks) but a cruelly misunderstood poster from days gone by. It's wrong on several levels, and that's before you take into account this is an American poster, and back in Blighty, our use of "Fanny" just elevates (well sinks more like) this poster from merely fail to epic fail.
Enjoy...
AD
Okay before the fits of laughter start again due to Fanny's Moist and Sticky Muffin....
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.ca/Peter-Reinharts-Whole-Grain-Breads/dp/1580087590/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274204942&sr=1-1
That book is the gospel for the mixture of science and baking (well baking whole grain breads). I am on my second read through. It will take a 3rd and 4th I think, but man can I make some good bread now.