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I used to be a 'measure everything perfectly' baker until one disaster last fall
For years I was that person who weighed every single gram of flour and leveled my baking soda with a knife like my life depended on it. Then I tried making a batch of chocolate chip cookies last October for a friend's party in Portland and forgot to add the eggs. Like completely blanked on them. The cookies came out flat as cardboard and tasted like sweet sand. I was so mad I almost threw out the whole mixer. But then I got lazy the next weekend and just eyeballed a recipe my grandma used to make, no scale, no measuring spoons, just the same cup and spoon from her kitchen. They turned out better than any batch I ever weighed. Now I only measure by weight for bread or pastry dough where it actually matters. For cookies and cakes I just go by feel and look. Anyone else find that being super exact actually makes things worse sometimes?
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kim_sanchez191mo agoMost Upvoted
Three batches of brownies last spring taught me the same lesson, @troy977. I used a food scale for the first two and they came out dry with weird crumbly edges. The third batch I just dumped stuff in like my mom did when I was a kid, no measuring at all. They were perfect, fudgy in the middle with that crackly top. My grandma always said baking was more about how the dough feels than what the numbers say, and I guess she was right. Being exact can definitely backfire sometimes, especially when you start stressing over it.
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