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Poptart rule
(slrpnk.net)
I fucking suck at cooking
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this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2024
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Baking is the worst place to start for a beginner, because it reauires more precision in ingredient quantity and technique. There's little room for error.
Whereas with cooking a simple dish like pasta or rice, you have more leeway with quantities and cooking times and preparation. And wayy more room for error. You can easily experiment with more/less of ingredients because it won't affect the overall dish and flavour much.
Whereas with baking, dough for example is hell. You need an almost astronomical precision unless you want to glue your entire kitchen, or make it too runny, or too floury. Baking also becomes more difficult wihout measurement devices, whereas with cooking trusting something loose like a cup or just eyeballing isn't catastrophic.
Also baking is heavily dependent on factors beyond many peoples control, such as the humidity and temperature in your home, or the quality of your oven. Cookies are fine, everyone should take a crack at them, but anything with yeast is a fussy little bitch that will fuck you over just for fun.
Making simple bread is very easy and hard to fuck up as long as you follow the goddamn instructions. It's an excellent place to start. It's where I started and I know how to make some very good stuff now. It's a lot easier to get started than many fear.
Want to immediately crowd please while still doing dead simple baking? Club med bread. Piss easy bread that people tend to love and think is much more complicated.
Assuming OOP does infact just microwave poptarts and relies on other ready-mades, I don't think they have all the necessary equipment for baking.
I just think it's a tougher place to start in because while you get exact measurements, there's more nuance and less room for improvising.
I tried baking something (pigs in blankets) for the first time after having cooked for years. If you are not fully prepared for every micro-disaster that can strike during dough making, your life will be hell. Cooking pasta only has the prerequisite of knowing how to boil water, and reading the time for how much to boil the noodles.
You can follow the instructions on bread, quantities and time to bake, and yet there's still stuff you have to account for and know from experience.