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I always found it strange that in school our 'food technology' course focused on baking and not normal cooking. Baking, aside from maybe bread or pizza bases o

I always found it strange that in school our 'food technology' course focused on baking and not normal cooking. Baking, aside from maybe bread or pizza bases or something, is basically pure luxury, whereas cooking is actually useful. I can probably count the times I've baked in the last few years in the single digits. If you put too much flour in a cake it's going to ruin the consistency, potentially be too dry, whatever. If you put "too much" spice or oil or vegetables or whatever in a curry or casserole or soup it's just going to taste different. It's quite hard to make a meal that's not serviceable on the hob.

wccrawford 7y ago
On the other hand, if you can bake, you can cook. Cooking is the same thing, but a lot more relaxed on requirement to follow directions. If you're teaching something, you might as well teach something that tells the student they were wrong, instead of hiding their mistake.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Baking requires more precision overall (in general) but cooking involves a lot of techniques that you don't find in baking. I think of them as two overlapping set of skills. Cooking certainly isn't a subset of baking.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  This doesn’t ring true to me. As a bread baker I’ll just do the same recipe 1000 times, watching YouTube videos week after week, practicing different techniques, seeing if tiny variations in technique, weather, etc, affect the end product. That’s completely different from cooking, which is about learning to Google, evaluating whether to trust a recipe, menu planning, seasonal ingredient management, knowing the personalities of the people you’re cooking for, understanding a wide range of cuisines... it feels like a fully different activity. And being able to follow the recipe isn’t really the key to either. It’s the price of admission.
  - codyb 7y ago
    I can cook at this point, self made recipes and sauces and delicious foods. But I find google (or ddg in my case) to be shit for finding recipes. Too many results, lots of filler content about someone’s grandma and yada yada yada. These days I just pick up a few well rated cookbooks (or I receive them as gifts) and go from there. Let someone else do the curation, it’s very rarely the fun part of cooking, and I enjoy cookbooks because they have recipes for things I wouldn’t have thought to even look up. Plus, there’s something very calming to me about looking through a cookbook. Maybe it’s the same for others. Cooking and baking shows are similar. It’s just hard to be stressed watching someone make food.

wccrawford 7y ago

On the other hand, if you can bake, you can cook. Cooking is the same thing, but a lot more relaxed on requirement to follow directions. If you're teaching something, you might as well teach something that tells the student they were wrong, instead of hiding their mistake.

ghaff 7y ago
Baking requires more precision overall (in general) but cooking involves a lot of techniques that you don't find in baking. I think of them as two overlapping set of skills. Cooking certainly isn't a subset of baking.
erikpukinskis 7y ago
This doesn’t ring true to me. As a bread baker I’ll just do the same recipe 1000 times, watching YouTube videos week after week, practicing different techniques, seeing if tiny variations in technique, weather, etc, affect the end product. That’s completely different from cooking, which is about learning to Google, evaluating whether to trust a recipe, menu planning, seasonal ingredient management, knowing the personalities of the people you’re cooking for, understanding a wide range of cuisines... it feels like a fully different activity. And being able to follow the recipe isn’t really the key to either. It’s the price of admission.
- codyb 7y ago
  I can cook at this point, self made recipes and sauces and delicious foods. But I find google (or ddg in my case) to be shit for finding recipes. Too many results, lots of filler content about someone’s grandma and yada yada yada. These days I just pick up a few well rated cookbooks (or I receive them as gifts) and go from there. Let someone else do the curation, it’s very rarely the fun part of cooking, and I enjoy cookbooks because they have recipes for things I wouldn’t have thought to even look up. Plus, there’s something very calming to me about looking through a cookbook. Maybe it’s the same for others. Cooking and baking shows are similar. It’s just hard to be stressed watching someone make food.