If you aren’t cooking by vibe, are you really living?
Baking on the other hand…
I have a Master’s Degree in chemistry, I can’t bake for shit. Cooking, on the other hand, I excel.
Baking is actually ranching.
Yeast is closer to the animal kingdom than the plant kingdom. It’s a living organism you need to feed so it will grow your food. You need to make it comfortable and give it an environment to thrive and then kill it when it’s the yummiest.
You can still get jazzy with it tho once you understand tha chemistry well enough.
Jazzy Chemistry sounds like the title of a textbook that is attempting to be more attractive to students.
Baking by vibe takes some work, and you should practice recipes by the letter before trying it, but it can be fun. It’s more so knowing the impact of what you’re adding.
Spices, for instance, can be added by vibe to some recipes. Flour, on the other hand, should be weighed out and a firm knowledge of ratio to fat rather then vibes.
I had to bake by vibes one time because I started a recipe then realized I didn’t have eggs and the friend the cake was for is lactose intolerant. Used a can of coconut milk. Turned into brownies instead of chocolate cake, but they were good enough that I’ve been intentionally making them since.
With a deep enough knowledge of how baking works, it can be done. My sister improvises baked goods very well. The sad thing is that when one turns out amazing instead of just good, she can’t replicate it because she doesn’t know the recipe. I’m particularly sad I’ll never again have the amazing butter rum pound cake she made for her daughter’s birthday last year. She tried to make it again later, but it just wasn’t the same. :(
It requires more precision, sure, but there are absolutely bakers who can taste a dough and tweak the water/flour/oil etc. ratios to get the perfect bread.
It’s only different from other kinds of cooking because most people haven’t developed those senses. If you knew what you were doing, you could bake from scratch without a recipe easily and go by “vibes” (i.e. based on sensory input).
Well, cooking normally doesn’t require rising. Baking usually does. Knowing how chemicals react and how yeast acts is important. Cooking is mostly just about flavor. You should know about the Maillard reaction and burning, but as long as the flavors are good (and you don’t cook something that’ll make you sick) then you’re going to be fine.
I’m pretty sure most cooks use spices according to their internal feelings on what contexts the spices work well in. Basically the smell test except they have enough experience with the spice already to just do it in their head. Pretty sure this isn’t that unusual.
The human sensory experience is much more varied and foreign to your own than you think. Some can combine flavours in their head, others couldn’t explain a flavour they eat daily unless it was in their mouths at the time.
I’m in the latter group but a supertaster and can tell what it’s missing with a spoonful usually. Couldn’t tell you what the result will taste like but know it’s lacking salt, cumin, herbs, etc. Wee sniff of what you’re going to add as you swallow to confirm.
I have a very sensitive sense of smell, and I still can’t do it. I’ll always add too much or not enough.
That’s me when my family wants me to whip up a random pasta lunch. Hmm, mulled black peppercorn and garlic? A bit of paprika? Tomato paste, oh now it definitely needs oregano.
Shit, I’m just making pasta alla vodka again.
“Can you share the recipe?”
“Nope!”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously, I don’t remember.”
…that’s pretty much my improvisational style, everything eyeballed, nothing measured: sometimes things turn out amazing but of course the cost of those happy surprises is that i’ll never make it the same way again; couldn’t if i tried…
…i dated a girl who dogmatically followed published recipes, considered any deviations anathema to the authors’ labor developing them, and she was horrified to watch me cook…
for me it’s easy because i mostly remember what i just made. but that’s also because i pay special attention to what i do and what comes out afterwards, kinda to do semi-structured research.
Isn’t this normal?
All cooking is vibes based.
It’s baking where you’ve got to plan it out like d-day.
