Showerthought: I keep seeing people say 'just follow the recipe exactly' and I think that's bad advice

I was scrolling through a baking group yesterday and someone posted a flat cake, asking what went wrong. The top comment, with like 200 upvotes, was 'you must have changed something, recipes are tested, follow them exactly.' That really bugged me. I've been baking for about 7 years, and I've learned that blindly following a recipe is a sure way to fail sometimes. My oven runs about 25 degrees hot, which I found out after three batches of burnt shortbread cookies. If I had just followed the time and temp on the paper, I'd keep failing. Ingredients matter too, like how your local humidity changes how much flour you really need. Telling new bakers to never adapt is setting them up to be confused when things go wrong. How do you all learn to tweak a recipe for your own kitchen?

3 comments

3 Comments

christopher9523mo ago

My friend’s oven nearly burned her house down.

thea1433mo ago

Glad she caught it in time. My own cooking is so bad the smoke alarm is basically my timer. At least my place is safe from anything more than a burnt pizza.

sarah_brown16d ago

Exactly what I went through when I started baking. Burnt a batch of muffins so bad the kitchen smelled for a week. @christopher952 knows what I mean about ovens being unpredictable, mine swings temp like crazy. I learned the hard way that you gotta know your equipment first, treat a recipe as a guide not a strict rule. Humidity in my area is pretty high so I always add less liquid or extra flour to balance it out. New bakers get told to follow things to the letter but that ignores small differences in ingredients and tools. Happy you posted this, it's real advice people need to hear.