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Truth. To be blunt, while some aspects of some recipes can be scaled linearly, others can not. Bakers percentages (measuring by-weight as a percentage of the
by calmbonsai 9mo ago
Truth. To be blunt, while some aspects of some recipes can be scaled linearly, others can not.
Bakers percentages (measuring by-weight as a percentage of the largest mass ingredient (usually flour or water)) only work for lean dough and only for the non-fermenting components of that dough.
Put more concretely, one does not linearly scale the yeast in a lean dough. It results in far too rapid a fermentation, over-proofed dough, and less flavor complexity.
- D-Machine 9mo agoThis. Belief in linear scaling of recipes is such a quick tell for someone who hasn't done even the most basic home cooking (or someone who has no sense of taste / texture at all).
- TeMPOraL 9mo agoFWIW, in theory this makes slide rules even better for this, as they've been specifically designed to allow you to lock in non-linear relationships. Cooking is stacking exponents with whole range of parameters, so linear scaling indeed happens only sometimes, if you squint hard :). Unfortunately, the error bars on everything are huge - purity and quantity of ingredients, accuracy of measuring devices, accuracy and reliability of equipment, and people's care about the process - they're all so bad that cooking simply cannot be anything better than an art. (The non-art variant is called process engineering.)
- D-Machine 9mo agoHeh, true, good point. But yeah, it is the messiness and art of it that keeps it fun for me (especially after a day of math and coding)!