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The anxiety of the perfect loaf: the illusion of culinary precision | josh iza.ac

iza.ac · 2,173 words · saved by 1 readers

One of my favorite recipes for challah does not tell you how much flour to use. To a modern amateur baker, this omission borders on heresy. In an era where we measure yeast to the gram, a recipe that merely offers a rough estimate and casually instructs you to “add flour...

Update: This blogpost has been getting a (minor) amount of attention over on Hackernews and Metafilter. I took a moment in a new blogpost to go through some of the comments. One of my favorite recipes for challah does not tell you how much flour to use. To a modern amateur baker, this omission borders on heresy. In an era where we measure yeast to the gram, a recipe that merely offers a rough estimate and casually instructs you to “add flour until the dough feels tacky” sounds daunting. But it is an honest reflection of how the bread is personally made: adding flour, half-a-cup at a time,…

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