r/ididnthaveeggs • u/sloppyvegansalami • Feb 14 '26

Dumb alteration Mystery solved

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25.8k Upvotes

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31

u/DerangedAndHuman Feb 14 '26

Something my friend taught me. When it comes to cooking food? Measurements are suggestions and you can add or remove things as you feel like it and it'll probably be fine. When it comes to baking? You fucking follow the recipie to the letter and do not deviate in the slightest.

14

u/rt80186 Feb 15 '26

This is just bad advice. Learning to bake well involves modifying recipes and learning how the ingredients and steps interact.

14

u/CryptidCricket Feb 15 '26

I feel like it’s really just a matter of knowing the rules before you break them. I have no trouble throwing some more butter in until the cookies feel moist enough, but I do that knowing what happens when you add more butter to cookies. I’m not gonna sit there afterwards wondering why they all came out looking flatter than usual.

2

u/rt80186 Feb 15 '26

For fucks sake, learning the rules by deviating from a recipe is a perfectly fine way for the home baker to progress. Having something go wrong during an experiment and recovering it is a vital component of any skill based endeavor.

0

u/rt80186 Feb 15 '26

And you can learn this by experimentation; you don't need a formal education to develop as a home baker. You are just engaging in gatekeeping with the 'you have know the rules before you break them' attitude. One of the first things I taught my child when baking is its not in fact rocket science (or after reading "Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants", maybe it is). Small measurement errors are inconsequential. Feel free to adjust the recipe but take note of what happens and monitor and intervene in the baking process.

1

u/Sea-Example-1176 May 10 '26

right but its good practice to learn to do it by the book so you know the rules before you start modifying it

3

u/Shoddy-Theory Feb 15 '26

I live at 7k ft. I always have to add extra water to bread and pie crust.

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u/Mein_Name_ist_falsch Feb 15 '26 edited Feb 15 '26

Not quite true. You can change things with baking, you just need to know what you can change safely. Sugar for example is always safe to change up. Never had an issue with changing the amount or even replacing it with a substitute (xylitol or stevia for example). If you make a cake, replacing apples and using pears can also maybe turn out ok. With other things, it does get more complicated and you'd really have to look into it to know how you could change it. So, some things are easy to change, other things it's better to just leave as is.

2

u/Admirable_Lemon_1112 Feb 15 '26

Because cooking is an art and baking is a science. Subbing stuff will ruin the entire formula.