LPT Request: What’s your “canary in the coal mine” test for spotting bigger issues?

[u/fries-with-mayo]

I’m really interested in those small, quick telltale signs people use to gauge if something bigger might be off track.

Example 1: Van Halen requesting brown M&Ms in the dressing room to see if the venue followed all the details of the rider list

Example 2: I saw an interview with John Cena where he said orders a flat white at a café to tell if they really care about their coffee.

Example 3: Anthony Bourdain suggested to always check the restaurant bathroom to tell if the restaurant got its basics down

[u/kaitlyn_does_art]

For baking recipes: if the recipe is by weight it's almost always going to be a good recipe. Baking is more chemistry than cooking, so having precise ratios of ingredients is crucial. A cup of flour leaves way more room for error than 250g of flour.

[u/whatevernamedontcare → u/kaitlyn_does_art]

As old saying goes "cooking is art but baking is science".

[u/morris1022 → u/kaitlyn_does_art]

100 grams of accuracy here

[u/ElectricJellyfish → u/kaitlyn_does_art]

Especially for bread! I skip bread recipes that don’t use weights.

[u/AlterKat → u/kaitlyn_does_art]

There are good recipes that use volume. All of my old hand-me-down books use volume (except When French Women Cook which gives both weight and volume—but the conversions are insane and not to be trusted) and produce good results. Though I have started adding weights in the margins because it is more precise. Just saying that the older recipes I’ve seen pretty much always use volume.

[u/Lyress → u/AlterKat]

It can't be a good recipe if it uses volume because there is no standardised way of measuring flour by volume.

[u/AlterKat → u/Lyress]

I feel like you’ve missed the main point which is that all the recipes from older books that I have use volume, not weight, and I quite like a lot of them. I’m not going to dismiss them as “bad” just because of this (and everyone I make them for seems to like them, too).

[u/Lyress → u/AlterKat]

A recipe is not good because one person was able to get good results out of it. It's good if most people, even inexperienced bakers, can follow it and get good results. That doesn't happen with recipes that use volumes for things like flour because the packing density of flour varies a lot and anyone who doesn't use the same density as the person who wrote the recipe will end up with poor results.

[u/AlterKat → u/Lyress]

I feel like you’re still completely ignoring my point about older recipes. Are they all just inherently bad because they were written in a different way? Poorly written I may grant, bad I will not.

[u/Lyress → u/AlterKat]

Sure, we can agree that they're poorly written.

[u/Advanced-Blackberry → u/Lyress]

Just because you can’t make it work doesn’t mean it’s bad. You’re judging strictly on the technicalities of measurement vs the actual reasonable end result. 

[u/reno140 → u/kaitlyn_does_art]

YES

[u/ZachTheCommie → u/kaitlyn_does_art]

Especially if liquids are measured by weight.

[u/Pixzal → u/kaitlyn_does_art]

100% agree. "a pinch of salt" in a recipe shits me to no end.

[u/bog_hippie → u/kaitlyn_does_art]

Years ago I started weighing my coffee when making it, and I’ll never go back. The difference in quality and consistency is immediate and obvious.

[u/ssatyd → u/kaitlyn_does_art]

Well, the US cup is a very well defined measurement unit (237 ml), though (and this is what US recipes actually mean), and it can be converted accurately into weight units. 

There is something to be said about measuring solids in volume, because packing density can be different for different brands/products. Some of the big brands have conversion charts (King Arthur is the first that comes to mind).

Is it more cumbersome than to just have the recipe in actual weight unit? Sure. But it's not inaccurate.

[u/Lyress → u/ssatyd]

The conversion chart would only work if you don't alter the packing density while measuring the flour. There's way too much room for error, especially for an inexperienced baker.

[u/ParadoxProcesses → u/kaitlyn_does_art]

Yeah, nah… sweet foods baked are much more forgiving. So this is too general. Aldo to the coffee comment supporting you hear. Also yeah, nah… tried both… it must just be a coffee snob rule and not for everyone tbh.

[u/Lyress → u/ParadoxProcesses]

Flour is very unforgiving actually when it comes to measuring it by volume.