COOK FOOD GOOD - Blogging BDL's Cookbook
CFG IX, Digression into Measurements for Baking, Plus More General Principles
There's plenty more CFG knife, sharpeining and knife skills maundering to be posted; and I promise to add at least one more entry this week. But this whole baking by scale thing came up, and I thought it was worth an entry if only for the way the subject relates to my outlook in re CFG.
In relevant part this entry is also posted in a thread Dave (dscheidt) started in the Pastries and Baking forum here at CT.
Swimmers up. Take your mark. Bang!
Preface, Speaking of viewpoints:
dscheidt (aka Dave) started this thread (at my suggestion) mostly as a way of expressing his own viewpoint regarding the superiority of measuring by weight in bread baking, and partly as a way of dragging out mine. Although Siduri was eloquent in expressing an opinion I share for the most part, it wouldn't be fair if I didn't participate.
As it happens, I have multiple viewpoints on the subject reflecting (2) How I bake; (3) How I write; (4) How I think beginners should learn to bake, and how advanced beginners and intermediates can improve their baking; (5) Which methods I think are best for home bakers generally; and (1) How I think other people should bake.
This merits inclusion in the darn blog. So, I’ll edit it just a bit after posting to make sense in that context, and put it there too.
1. Other People's Bread Baking:
Let me tackle the last first with the liberal, inclusive, and uninteresting thought that whatever works for you is fine by me. I'm not about to tell you to change.
2. My Own Bread Baking:
"+ 1" with Siduri, in spades.
Not only no scale, sometimes I don't even use official measuring cups and go strictly by eye ("by eye" isn't the same as not measuring). Even though that's sufficiently accurate for good results down the line, in order to get flour out of the flour jar neatly, and without catastrophically huge flour dumps, a scoop is required. Since I know the volume of nearly every glass and cup in my kitchen, using one isn't much different from using a measuring scoop. Anything dry and small gets measured in the palm. When it comes to liquid measurements – same Mark II GI Eyeball, same glasses and cups, and yes I do have glass measuring cups of all sizes.
Unsurprisingly, that mishmash of measuring is how I cook almost everything. And that sort of ad hoc measurement is pretty common with cooks who've [shudder] done it for [sob] money.
If you care about how I cook while not actually standing in my home with a cold beverage in one hand, an hors d’oeuvre in the other, and hunger in your belly – you shouldn't.
3. Writing Bread Recipes:
There are a lot of audiences and a lot of ways to go about writing a bread recipe. One quality they should all share is that of being “perfected” before being made generally available.
“Perfecting a recipe” is actually a term of art for a professional cook. It doesn’t mean tweaking a recipe to make it as good as it can possibly be. What it does mean is making a recipe which can be followed by the intended reader, and from which the reader can produce a good result – similar to that intended by the writer.
No matter how the writer first made the bread (or dish, or whatever), she (or he as in my case) must communicate ingredient amounts, necessary equipment, techniques, sequences, temperatures, etc., in an understandable way. With amounts, that means measurements which are reproducible to a degree of accuracy satisfying the “the reader can produce a good result – similar to that intended by the writer” component.
As a practical matter, perfecting a recipe from the “pinch of this,” a “little more of that” process of creation, involves a significant amount of rounding off. A recipe writer understands that this is not only a function of the amount of leeway allowed by the ingredients in relation to the ultimate loaf, but of what measuring tools the reader is likely to have and is comfortable using.
The result component also takes us back to the “lot of ways” thing. If writing a regular cookbook about bread baking, in order to appeal to the widest possible audience, it would be a VGT (very good thing) to to include all three major forms of measurement – volume, weight and normative metric. Not to mention, good manners. However, when writing a methods and techniques driven cooking course, perhaps it might best serve the writer and his or her readers to select those which are most conducive for the task.
Nice segue, what? (Where’s Nigel Bruce when you need him?) What?
4. Teaching How and How Better Through Better Writing aka“Rubber meet road; road meet rubber”:
NB. Yes, it’s serial repetition, but will nonetheless be repeated serially: I’m not trying to teach how to cook by following a recipe. I’m trying to teach a level of method and technique allowing the reader to follow and/or improvise upon recipes she finds of interest; and to develop her own recipes without undue trial and error.
Let me start this with the thought that I’m increasingly open to including scale driven, weight measurements along with volume measurements in CFG if only for the sake of good manners.
That said, I think using a scale detracts from the most important parts of teaching and learning home bread baking, and of teaching and learning to bake bread better at home. Each and every one of those important things is sensorial, not metric.
At this time, I feel scale-driven recipe quantities, within the context of my intentions, are more harmful than helpful for several reasons. Most of these devolve from the sense that the author’s measurements are so perfected they are fixed and immutable. This is wrong on so many levels. For instance, weight does not accurately reflect humidity. 1,000 gm of humid flour and 1,000 gm of dry flour weigh the same. Yet they will ultimately reflect different levels of hydration. In a larger sense, this goes to the fact that baking is very sensitive to environmental conditions. Almost always, the best way to find the correct flour/liquid ratio is through observation and successive iteration at the mixing and kneading stages, involving sight, touch, and plenty of bench flour.
One aspect of technique driven cooking is learning what is and what is not important. The history of baking is much longer than the use of standardized weights and measures in cooking. People – including home cooks and professional bakers – used idiosyncratic (in the sense of being individualistic) measures, yet still managed to turn out good bread. Did baking get better with the introduction of Pyrex graduated measuring cups? No, at least not that I’m aware of. What about with electronic home scales? Same answer; although to be fair as measuring became increasingly standardized and accurate, recipe driven results have probably become more consistent.
If this sounds critical of scale-driven recipe writing or scale-driven baking, it isn’t meant that way. It’s all about CFG and that’s a very narrow scope indeed.
5. How YOU SHOULD bake:
Refer to “1,” near the beginning of this screed, while holding the following thought: “Like I’m going to tell you.”
The best advice I can give is to pay attention to your eyes, hands, and the dough itself, once everything’s been measured.
In relevant part this entry is also posted in a thread Dave (dscheidt) started in the Pastries and Baking forum here at CT.
Swimmers up. Take your mark. Bang!
Preface, Speaking of viewpoints:
dscheidt (aka Dave) started this thread (at my suggestion) mostly as a way of expressing his own viewpoint regarding the superiority of measuring by weight in bread baking, and partly as a way of dragging out mine. Although Siduri was eloquent in expressing an opinion I share for the most part, it wouldn't be fair if I didn't participate.
As it happens, I have multiple viewpoints on the subject reflecting (2) How I bake; (3) How I write; (4) How I think beginners should learn to bake, and how advanced beginners and intermediates can improve their baking; (5) Which methods I think are best for home bakers generally; and (1) How I think other people should bake.
This merits inclusion in the darn blog. So, I’ll edit it just a bit after posting to make sense in that context, and put it there too.
1. Other People's Bread Baking:
Let me tackle the last first with the liberal, inclusive, and uninteresting thought that whatever works for you is fine by me. I'm not about to tell you to change.
2. My Own Bread Baking:
"+ 1" with Siduri, in spades.
Not only no scale, sometimes I don't even use official measuring cups and go strictly by eye ("by eye" isn't the same as not measuring). Even though that's sufficiently accurate for good results down the line, in order to get flour out of the flour jar neatly, and without catastrophically huge flour dumps, a scoop is required. Since I know the volume of nearly every glass and cup in my kitchen, using one isn't much different from using a measuring scoop. Anything dry and small gets measured in the palm. When it comes to liquid measurements – same Mark II GI Eyeball, same glasses and cups, and yes I do have glass measuring cups of all sizes.
Unsurprisingly, that mishmash of measuring is how I cook almost everything. And that sort of ad hoc measurement is pretty common with cooks who've [shudder] done it for [sob] money.
If you care about how I cook while not actually standing in my home with a cold beverage in one hand, an hors d’oeuvre in the other, and hunger in your belly – you shouldn't.
3. Writing Bread Recipes:
There are a lot of audiences and a lot of ways to go about writing a bread recipe. One quality they should all share is that of being “perfected” before being made generally available.
“Perfecting a recipe” is actually a term of art for a professional cook. It doesn’t mean tweaking a recipe to make it as good as it can possibly be. What it does mean is making a recipe which can be followed by the intended reader, and from which the reader can produce a good result – similar to that intended by the writer.
No matter how the writer first made the bread (or dish, or whatever), she (or he as in my case) must communicate ingredient amounts, necessary equipment, techniques, sequences, temperatures, etc., in an understandable way. With amounts, that means measurements which are reproducible to a degree of accuracy satisfying the “the reader can produce a good result – similar to that intended by the writer” component.
As a practical matter, perfecting a recipe from the “pinch of this,” a “little more of that” process of creation, involves a significant amount of rounding off. A recipe writer understands that this is not only a function of the amount of leeway allowed by the ingredients in relation to the ultimate loaf, but of what measuring tools the reader is likely to have and is comfortable using.
The result component also takes us back to the “lot of ways” thing. If writing a regular cookbook about bread baking, in order to appeal to the widest possible audience, it would be a VGT (very good thing) to to include all three major forms of measurement – volume, weight and normative metric. Not to mention, good manners. However, when writing a methods and techniques driven cooking course, perhaps it might best serve the writer and his or her readers to select those which are most conducive for the task.
Nice segue, what? (Where’s Nigel Bruce when you need him?) What?
4. Teaching How and How Better Through Better Writing aka“Rubber meet road; road meet rubber”:
NB. Yes, it’s serial repetition, but will nonetheless be repeated serially: I’m not trying to teach how to cook by following a recipe. I’m trying to teach a level of method and technique allowing the reader to follow and/or improvise upon recipes she finds of interest; and to develop her own recipes without undue trial and error.
Let me start this with the thought that I’m increasingly open to including scale driven, weight measurements along with volume measurements in CFG if only for the sake of good manners.
That said, I think using a scale detracts from the most important parts of teaching and learning home bread baking, and of teaching and learning to bake bread better at home. Each and every one of those important things is sensorial, not metric.
At this time, I feel scale-driven recipe quantities, within the context of my intentions, are more harmful than helpful for several reasons. Most of these devolve from the sense that the author’s measurements are so perfected they are fixed and immutable. This is wrong on so many levels. For instance, weight does not accurately reflect humidity. 1,000 gm of humid flour and 1,000 gm of dry flour weigh the same. Yet they will ultimately reflect different levels of hydration. In a larger sense, this goes to the fact that baking is very sensitive to environmental conditions. Almost always, the best way to find the correct flour/liquid ratio is through observation and successive iteration at the mixing and kneading stages, involving sight, touch, and plenty of bench flour.
One aspect of technique driven cooking is learning what is and what is not important. The history of baking is much longer than the use of standardized weights and measures in cooking. People – including home cooks and professional bakers – used idiosyncratic (in the sense of being individualistic) measures, yet still managed to turn out good bread. Did baking get better with the introduction of Pyrex graduated measuring cups? No, at least not that I’m aware of. What about with electronic home scales? Same answer; although to be fair as measuring became increasingly standardized and accurate, recipe driven results have probably become more consistent.
If this sounds critical of scale-driven recipe writing or scale-driven baking, it isn’t meant that way. It’s all about CFG and that’s a very narrow scope indeed.
5. How YOU SHOULD bake:
Refer to “1,” near the beginning of this screed, while holding the following thought: “Like I’m going to tell you.”
The best advice I can give is to pay attention to your eyes, hands, and the dough itself, once everything’s been measured.
Total Comments 1
Comments
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Chef BDL,
I plan on doing more research......Thank YouPosted 11-05-2009 at 08:46 AM by petalsandcoco
Updated 11-05-2009 at 01:21 PM by petalsandcoco
