In my everyday life, I’m a scientist. I do a great deal of adding small volumes of clear liquid to different small volumes of clear liquid and then putting the mix in a variety of machines. During my first week of my first job after I graduated college, my boss told me that laboratory procedures aren’t like recipes. After six years, I beg to differ. I think they are exactly like recipes: if you understand the underlying principles, then you will be able to dynamically adjust your recipe (or experiment) to achieve the desired outcome. In science, the outcome is something that will help answer your broader scientific question. In the kitchen, the outcome is something delicious that you get to eat (highly discouraged in a lab setting).
I find myself asking the same types of questions when I’m baking that I do when I’m in the lab. Here, I hope to share some of the answers to my baking questions.