Cooking yes. Baking, no.
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2026
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Even baking. I follow the measurements until I just know how it's supposed to look at the different stages of prep.
Could be my professional deformation as a food technologist, but for some things, most notably baking, I absolutely demand proper measurement.
With enough things considered (for baking: weight of the ingredients, gluten strength and moisture content of flour, yolk to white ratio in eggs, fat content in milk, humidity, leavening/baking temperatures, steaming/not steaming, moisture of additional components, order of assembly - measure and plan out as much as you can) you'll always have a perfect bake instead of "oh, ended up not quite as I wanted".
This is all the reasons I don't measure. I bake by feel. Protein content in the flour and to many other variables, I just adjust stuff till it feels right and proof
Yeah when I've truly messed up baking it's usually because I ignored my guts and just followed the recipe.
A recipe is a great guide, but unless you're using the exact exact same ingredients in the exact exact same conditions, then you're going to want to improvise.
For baking just get a kitchen scale.
Oh I do. Baking is more like Chemistry than cooking. Somethings are just too important to leave to chance. Measure measure measure.
This is repeated so much. Nah I don't measure for either and just go based on vibes.
I vibe as well, the one exception being making bread in the bread machine, and thats mostly because its old and sucks and if I don't use very specific weight-based measurements it fails and falls. Still edible but disappointing. I genuinely do not have the capacity to make bread any other way, I’ll forget about it or wait too long or whatever else, 1000% guaranteed, but I am in the market for a newer machine, maybe better features, maybe a cooking coil that doesn't turn every loaf into a thick-crumb dark brown, even on light crust setting loaf.
Booo
Even cooking I'd disagree.
I have 300+ recipes and many of them get a tweak every time I make them.
I'm dubious. They be talking like they baking, but nothing is listed by grams
I do loads of baking and never measure anything. Just keep adding flour or water until the dough passes the vibe check and stick it in the oven.
Depending on the thing you're baking, that can work.
Like, bread? While you need to weigh things if you want consistency between batches, as in reliable, predictable results; you throw yeast into wet flour, it'll rise and you can bake it. So going by feel totally works as well.
Where you can't get away with it automatically is chemically leavened things. You gotta have a minimum proportion of whatever you're using (baking soda or whatever) to flour, and if you go too high it'll mess things up as well. But even there, you don't have to weigh things, you can go by volume. It just comes with the caveat that your cake may be different enough to notice each time.
Or, with cookies, how shifting proportions of one ingredient changes how they spread, whether they're crispy or chewy.
It's all about precision, not getting something edible
I don't even use yeast, sourdough.
Pizza bases quite commonly. Not really sure what to call other things I often make. Similar to bannocks I suppose.
I mean, sourdough is the yeast. It's just got other things as well :)
Pizza dough is super forgiving! In a pinch, you can use dough you screwed up to make our and it'll be okay.
I like measuring things. Probably a carryover habit of my first uni (Chemistry), but the end result tends to be more predictable, and it helps me to avoid dumb mistakes from lack of attention.
For some things there's a bit more leeway to eyeball things; for example, if I'm adding water to dough I'll probably eyeball it. (Specially as hydration tends to behave weirdly in rainy days, so it's better to go by texture than by fixed amounts.) But I'm certainly not eyeballing the amount of salt that goes in the polenta, rice or meats.
Side note I hate that Reddit oversimplification where people seem to believe cooking allows eyeballing but baking doesn't. It stinks mental laziness; I think in both cases there's some room for eyeballing, and some for precision.
Wtf is the first one supposed to be, Playdough‽ that’s a lot of salt for that much flour.
Certified play dough eaters club
Once I read a old Chinese duck recipe.
Step 1 was to get a big rock to kill the duck with
Cooking isn't baking. Baking requires more precision. Cooking is more fluid.
Was Baker professionally. It is not really about precision especially if youre not hung up on consistency. And let me tell you, cooking also requires precision if you want consistency
And then there's mixology (who came up with this term!?).
Those who can't vibe follow a recipe 😏