Baking vs cooking - also, math class vs art class (PODCAST E69)

[@40nights40daystv]

Adam getting laid back with podcast dates and videos honestly has made the quality improve in the channel I didn’t think possible. I really appreciate these podcasts and what they’ve evolved into. I listen to every single one all the way to the end, fire content every time.

[@yourguysheppy]

Quality over quantity is the way

[@teekue]

Totally agree. I was sceptical at first because I am not big into podcasts but these are so good. And the main videos really leveled up.

[@undeniablySomeGuy]

@@yourguysheppy I think there's a pretty good balance of quantity and quality. Preparing an hour of tightly scripted and interesting monologue is no small feat, especially to do almost every week. Yes there are some QnA/casual pods to break it up, but overall this is a pretty large undertaking. If a university professor told me I had to submit a 50+ minute video presentation of meaningful information and well thought out ideas every week, I would probably drop the course as soon as I read the syllabus.

[@vitormelomedeiros]

During the roughly ten-minute tangent about terminology and definitions had between 2:28 and 12:17 I feel like Adam was DANCING AROUND some very cool science that I actually work with almost everyday! I study Political Science at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, but I engage quite closely with cognitive psychology and linguistics, in particular discussions of political categorization which draw from some very interesting work on psycholinguistics and semantics. To anyone who might be interested, Adam pretty much described the field we call "prototype theory" without explicitly acknowledging it. When he said that baking, in contemporary English, usually refers to the cooking of breads, cakes and pastries, he was pointing out the specific _family resemblances_ between prototypical examples of "baked goods" we find in daily usage. "Family resemblance" is a term popularized by Ludwig Wittgenstein (one of my favorite philosophers!) in his phenomenal book _Philosophical Investigations_ and highlights how "things which could be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no one feature is common to all of the things" (quote taken from the Wikipedia page on the concept, which is very good and thorough). Psychologist Eleanor Rosch used this concept to develop prototype theory (in essays like "Natural categories," "Cognitive reference points," and "Basic objects in natural categories"), in which she points out how "any given concept in any given language has [at least some] real world example[s] that best represent this concept" (also taken from Wikipedia -- the article on Prototype theory is also very good). Adam's question on 8:12 -- "What is baking necessarily, what is the common denominator of all recipes deemed 'baking'?" -- might be considered, from this perspective, misguided (and I feel like Adam's point was precisely that!), because it assumes there _is_ a common denominator to all baked goods, instead of a bunch of fuzzy family resemblances between them, which is probably the case. All the counterexamples he mentioned -- waffles (which use direct heat), savory pies (which are not desserts), meringue cookies (which are not based on grain flour), etc. -- could be called _non-prototypical_ examples of baked goods, while foods like a loaf of bread or a chocolate cake are more prototypical. On 10:06 Adam pretty much sums it up: "As is generally the case with words, the definitions are less like categories and more like clusters or clouds of associated ideas [family resemblances] all orbiting around a common but undefined, purely theoretical, center [the prototype]." I feel like he would really enjoy reading Eleanor Rosch's article "Natural categories" if he hasn't already, and I would certainly recommend it -- and the rest of her work -- to anyone whose interest was piqued by this episode of the pod!

[@undeniablySomeGuy]

This reminds me of that one author who wrote the layout of a submarine so convincingly that the US Military thought he had been leaked secrets, but when questioned, he had constructed it from logical reasoning and best guesses.

[@wilurbean]

His central argument is that a food may only be within a single category. That's not true as his pot pie exemplifies. As always the most interesting example in any field, STEM, Fine Arts....liberal arts..., medicine, etc are the ones which straddle multiple fields. Material science, your job, movie (is it business or managerial or artistic?

[@djscolari8]

Congrats on episode 69 Adam. Here’s to at least 351 more!

[@Rosskoflex]

Took me longer than it should have to get this haha

[@brandon9172]

If episode 420 isn't about marijuana I'm unsubbing.

[@Percussionists]

lmaoooo

[@espersterck3544]

Nice

[@pickitupdlux]

nice

[@WeencieRants]

Baking is recording a studio album. Cooking is playing in a live jazz band.

[@topilinkala1594]

Except that cooking hollandaise sauce is recording a studio album and baking bread is playing in a live jazz band.

[@44zeliow]

In the Netherlands we have "koken", ""bakken" and "frituren" which translates to boiling, baking and frying respectively. Koken means anything with mostly water like rice or soup. Frituren means anything deep fried. Bakken is everything else heat related, anything in a pan or oven falls under bakken. Anything made without heat is simply just making something.

[@matthiasbogerd653]

But's its more complicated, when someone does the "koken" this someone can still does "bakken". For example, someone makes baked potatoes with fried onions, but in the Netherlands we still would say that this person "kookt" today. I think we have kind of the same difference between those words as in english.

[@justwhistlinpixie]

So you would generally say that you are "making" dinner in Dutch? In English, one could say "I'm going to go cook dinner" even if you were just making a salad. I don't think anyone would say you were wrong unless they were feeling especially pedantic.

[@diegoeliasindriago7991]

@@matthiasbogerd653 i would argue that the key factor in all of this is that in other languages such as dutch, french or spanish the word for cook is used as an umbrella term for "putting food into fire"... and then the word (in spanish) for "bake" is "hornear" because "horno" is the word for "oven"... That would be like in english using a word like ovening to literally say "cooking things in the oven"

[@matthiasbogerd653]

@@diegoeliasindriago7991 although that may be true in spanish, in dutch it is the same as in english, koken is making dinner and also boiling something in water, bakken is the baking descripted in this podcast, as an activity and bakken is also making food with "dry heat" , in a pan or oven for example

[@DeltaNovum]

In the Netherlands lots of people like to get baked.

[@robertgamble7497]

A casserole is a stew that was prepared perfectly, but the guests were running late, so it was placed in the oven to keep it warm until everyone showed up.

[@Broockle]

last night's dinner wrapped in dough 😋

[@raraavis7782]

Listened to this on my podcast app, but I wanted to let you know, how much I enjoy your slightly rambling, but always thoughtful and interesting monologues about topics like these. It's like your thoughts follow a little path meandering through the countryside, passing through woods and fields and crossing the occasional little stream...and we can follow right along and enjoy the scenery with you!

[@DeltaNovum]

That's what we call adult, developed, regulated ADHD.

[@MrJ3]

Hard to believe you have done 70 podcast episodes now. I remember when you just started this new thing and it was surrounded by a lot of question marks. Now it's a weekly tradition and delight 🙂

[@rohiogerv22]

One fun oddity of Adam's definition: Blood Pudding is a more direct baked good than a funnel cake.

[@verager2493]

Another factor you've hinted at in other videos: active time. Cooking is usually faster, but you're standing there, actively stirring, seasoning, watching. Meanwhile, once it goes in the oven, you usually just wait. It takes more time, but you don't actually have to do anything during a lot of that time

[@kiraa.4529]

This... is honestly my favorite episode to date. Only you, Adam Ragusea, can make pedantic musings entertaining. I hope you keep the greenhouse setting! It's quite pleasant from a viewer POV. :)

[@RafaelusOptimus]

Well, in Spanish we don't have this epistemological madness. Baked is "horneado" which just means "cooked in the oven" so roasted chicken is "pollo rostizado" (if it's on a spit) or "pollo horneado" if it's in the oven. Freshly baked bread is "pan recién horneado". Everything is good in Spanish 😂

[@ferndossan]

In Portuguese it's even simpler. Everything is "assado". Assar o pão, assar a carne.

[@brettmajeske3525]

French even breaks down baking into baking with yeast (boulangère) and without (pâtisserie).

[@diegoeliasindriago7991]

literalmente: 🤗🤗🤗 punto para el español en esta

[@diegoeliasindriago7991]

para indagar mas en este insight... tal vez la raiz de todo este desorden lingiustico sea la influencia anglosajona/ germanica que tiene el ingles versus los lenguajes de pura raiz latina como el español y entiendo por el comentario de brett que el frances tambien // ENG below, if someone needs it to go further in this insight.. maybe the root of this linguistical mess is the germanic influence english have had vs other languages that are only of latin origin such as spanish, french, portuguese etc ... romance languages

[@yourguysheppy]

English continues to be a silly language

[@rainzerdesu]

I feel that CompSci kid preferring the F than asking a rando for an interview face to face

[@michaelcallahan8412]

Obligatory "math person" response -- I like the video, but personally I feel like the more interesting divide is between practitioners and creators. Adam clearly views artists as creators more than practitioners, and math as more practicing than creating. As someone that's done math research, where you're the person who has to summon formulas out of the ether, I think a lot of what adam said in regards to art applies here. That being said, it's still entirely objective, it's just that the creation of new objective truths can have an art unto itself.

[@IamJustaSimpleMan]

On the distinction between cooking and baking, what I find worth mentioning is that other languages or even dialects differentiate, well, differently between the two terms. (I am German so I'll use German and its dialects as an example). Savoury dishes made in the oven are called, depending on the dialect, with the German word for Baking, "Backen", as a prefix. Like for example the Austrian German "Backhendl", baked chicken. In other dialects they rather get the prefix "Brat", originating from the word "Braten", which is a Roast (as in: the dish roast, like for example beef roast). An example would be a very similar dish called Brathänchen, roasted chicken would be the direct translation I believe. This is of course neither an exhaustive list nor a critic, just thought it would be something interesting to think about. Love your videos Adam :) Big Fan.

[@raraavis7782]

I never noticed that. Isn't it weird in a way, that 'Bratkartoffeln' are made in a pan, whereas 'Braten' and 'Brathähnchen' are made in the oven? Although certain types of Braten can also be made in a deep casserole pan. A 'Bräter' 😅

[@fukpoeslaw3613]

In Dutch it's "bakken" in oil or butter etc. but also making bread without any fat. "Koken" is done with water, thee (tea) koken, aardappels (potatoes) groenten (vegetables) koken etc. But also making food in general applying heat is called koken. Isn't it the same in German?

[@IamJustaSimpleMan]

@@raraavis7782 Thats true! Good observation, thats weird and interesting indeed! :)

[@IamJustaSimpleMan]

@@fukpoeslaw3613 Thats very interesting as well! Yes its basically the same in german, I believe the expressions must have the same root to an extent - "kochen", as a concrete cooking technique and not a colloquial term, describes wet cooking, or something like brewing tea or coffee - heating of liquid and then using the liquid to cook/prepare the food/ingredient. "Backen" in german on the other hand can describe baking or roasting something in the oven, but we also say "baking Pancakes", "Pfannkuchen backen". If we roast something on the stove without fat, this would be called "rösten" - but again, all of this is kinda dependent on the dialect as well.

[@raraavis7782]

@@fukpoeslaw3613 Yes, indeed. 'Kochen' is both the general term for 'making hot food' and also the act of boiling something in water. 'braten' as a verb means searing and is done in a pan. 'Der Braten' is a roast though and typically done in the oven. 'Backen' is what you do in the oven, but usually refers to backing, not cooking savory food. With bread being a big exception. For casseroles and such we use 'überbacken' (over backing) - probably because the ingredients are often already 'done', the main point is melting the cheese on top and/or getting some sort of crust. I grew up in Aachen, not far from the border to the Netherlands and have always been fascinated by how similar the languages are - especially in writing.

[@Exiled_Rouge]

It's interesting the way Adam's nervousness about personally passing judgment or prescription is progressively revealed over the lifetime of the channel. This is my favorite podcast. So interesting and introspective.

[@lenn939]

Why am I really enjoying listening to a guy do a conceptual analysis of “baking”?

[@Crokto]

id describe your coffee brewing technique as cowboy coffee. its not exactly the same thing, but like, close enough. and especially appropriate for this semantic themed episode

[@MythosGandaar]

As a BA music graduate now working in STEM, I approve this episode

[@Broockle]

I dropped out of Engineering and Theoretical Physics to go into Game Design 😀

[@PracticalRenaissance]

"Oh cool Adam is doing an interesting take on baking and cooking and how that relates to the humanities and the hard sciences, that's pretty---- OH MY GOD call an ambulance for Sir Paul McCartney!"

[@gretl01]

🤣

[@falconJB]

I find the definition part of this episode interesting because that isn't how people around me use those words. If you put vegetables in an oven you are baking or broiling them, depending on which element you are using, I rarely hear anyone say they are roasting them unless there is fire involved. Also I don't hear people saying they are baking bread if they are not using an oven, I think most people where I live, would be quite surprised if I said I was baking bread for dinner and then brought out fried bread. Waffles are also not referred to as being baked, usually we say they are grilled if we are being more specific then just cooked.

[@voidsaverob]

we do roast veges with oil or baked veges without oil ig

[@CyanPhoenix_]

weirdly enough, i would consider the vegetables to be baking or baked (ie. baked potatoes), but I wouldn't consider the person cooking them to be "baking". language is weird.

[@ElizabethChronis]

@@CyanPhoenix_ … potatoes are a special weird! In my experience … If they’re whole, they’re baked. Cut up? Roasted. If someone served me cut up potatoes cooked in the oven and said they were serving “baked potatoes” I’d be rather disappointed … not because I don’t like them cooked that way, but because “baked potato” is a particular dish.

[@ElizabethChronis]

@falconJB … if you were looking for fresh waffles or fry bread or English muffins at a market, what section would you expect to find them? The first place I’d look is the baked goods or bakery section. Doesn’t mean they were literally baked, but that’s the category of food I’d most closely associate them with.

[@falconJB]

@@ElizabethChronis Sure because there are only so many aisles, they aren't going to make a fried bread aisles or a griddle cake aisle just for a couple of things, that doesn't mean anything though. A store I go to has cooking wine at the end of the 'ethnic' food aisle next to the Asian and Hispanic food not because anyone thinks its Asian or Hispanic just because it needs to go somewhere and they aren't going to make a cooking wine aisle.

[@michellee1190]

Also, you bake potatoes, you can even twice bake them! And they come out fluffy!

[@FutureCommentary1]

Also baked beans... That imo are not baked goods at all.

[@TehVaporSnake]

Adam, this is more a philosophy video than a cooking video 😂 Real strong artist vs scientist themes here

[@TehVaporSnake]

And I say that as a positive compliment

[@ChrisSeltzer]

That's not even remotely how the free market works. "The free market would suggest that doing art is harder because it pays less" Literally the opposite.

[@mixturebeatz]

I also think the question “Which is harder, dancing or fighting?” Is applicable here. I found myself asking myself this after years of mma training when I went to my first swing dance class. With mma you always know what works. Why? Because there is a clear and easy to understand metric to what works. Did you stop your opponent? If my opponent taps out I know instantly that what ever technique I used does work. With dancing you’re just supposed to know what it’s supposed to feel like. Well I didn’t know. It was much more difficult to get better at dancing for me. You must rely on what a third party sees when you and a partner dance. How do I know what looks pretty or cool or smooth? I don’t. But I sure as hell know when I put my opponent to sleep with a triangle choke. Fighting feels much more like a science while dancing feels much more like an art to me.

[@appa609]

nah dancing is routine while fighting is generative. You have to react to what your opponent is doing.

[@mixturebeatz]

⁠@@appa609Swing dance is not. Swing dance is a social dance. You are often meeting that person for the first time. You must react to how that follow follows or how that lead leads. You must react on the fly to not only your partner but also the environment around you. Other dancers.

[@donotreply8979]

@@appa609 you can't dance

[@takitakiboom]

Brilliant! Beginning with a philosophy of language on the difference between "baking" and "cooking" and ending with the "word salad" of many philosophy texts. Salads of course being an even broader, complicating subdivision of food preparation distinct. Just truly delightful listening.

[@sasche23]

I love this episode, and the comparison of baking to math and cooking to art is brilliant. I do have one issue. When talking about the free market, he left out a critical component. Demand. The reason most people fail as artisits is that it's a saturated market with very low demand, while people with math skills are in very high demand. Their failure has basically nothing to do how hard or easy the actual task is, how well they can perform it or how much effort they put in. The simple fact is that being a movie star is way more appealing to the vast majority of people than being an accountant. The same doesn't apply to baking and cooking (or at least not to this extreme, I would think. Who knows, though? Maybe pastry chefs are the rock stars of the culinary world). I feel this makes his metaphor fall apart somewhat. Or was it a simile? English class was a long time ago...

[@LowPolyPixel]

I was told the difference between baking and roasting was whether or not you covered whatever you're attempting to heat in oil. I will admit I've not really thought about it hard enough to determine if that definition really stands up.

[@ElizabethChronis]

Focaccia is smothered in olive oil & many roll recipes will have you cover the top with butter?

[@misaodean881]

Hey Adam, I am currently a professor in a humanities department and I hear you about teaching/grading. But I think there are other ways to look at these issues too. I’d love to talk to you about it.

[@JoshuaJeremiah]

Ohhh Adam is in trouble with the professor 🤣

[@aubreyravenl]

**hits bong*** "Am i cooked? Or am i baked?"

[@JohannGambolputty22]

Difficulty may be subjective but there’s one thing I know. In the middle of cooking I can mostly adjust seasoning, acid, fat and temperature to balance a pleasing outcome. If I mess something up when baking it comes out of the oven the way it comes. There’s no “fixing it.” So when people use the words “more difficult” this is most likely what they mean.

[@papalpatte]

I could listen to you talk about absolutly ANYTHING for hours on end. Love ya

[@TedPfau]

I'm surprised that leavening was not mentioned. It seems that dry heat plus one of the five types of leavening pretty clearly describes baking in this context

[@Falcodrin]

What about items with no leavening? Cheesecakes are definitely baked but have no leavening same with quiches, hardtack, and lasagna.

[@ElizabethChronis]

⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠@@Falcodrin I’d disagree about cheesecake not having leavening … a good cheesecake utilizes mechanical leavening of whipping cream cheese, sugar, & eggs. I think the question about quiche is similar to the question about Pot Pies that Adam asked … where is the “baked good” line between sweet & savory pies? either way, the crust is technically leavened via physical leavening with steam/melted butter to make it flaky. I don’t think I’d consider lasagna a “baked good” even if they are literally baked in an oven. As for hardtack, I find it hard to apply the modern definition of “baked good” to a food that’s no longer commonly made.

[@Falcodrin]

@@ElizabethChronis I agree on cheesecake but the butter to cause flaky pastry isnt performing as a leavening as that term specifically is about making bread rise. That's more of a textural thing than a rising thing. Also you can still buy hardtack but making it at home is super easy and it stores forever.

[@jasonbaker1887]

Is a casserole a baked good is a much better and more thought provoking discussion than the age old "Is a hot dog a sandwich?" and "Is cereal soup?". Thank you for asking a truly hard question.

[@ElizabethChronis]

Is lasagna cake?

[@aaronlawrence6350]

Another W in the column for sure, great podcast. I have felt similarly about grading, from the student side, and as a law student in particular. I thought my professors were generally excellent at letting us make arguments for positions and grading on the strength of the argument, rather than enforcing any "right" way of thinking on us. After all, that IS the act of lawyering -- making the best argument you can based on what the client needs from you. But I still felt there was some wiggle room on what counts as the "best" argument for a particular position. Not to mention, what classes we were required to take. For example, I believe all ABA-accredited law schools require students to take Torts, Contracts, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law, and some type of writing class within your first year, and a Property and Constitutional Law class before you graduate. But some of these topics are ones most people will never use. I'm a civil litigator at a big firm. I don't use Torts. I don't use Criminal Law. But if I were to use Criminal Law, it seems weird they didn't make me take Criminal Procedure as well. Why did they not make us take Evidence? I did as an elective because it struck me as VERY important, to both civil and criminal law. Why didn't they make us take Antitrust, or Environmental law? I can't think of more pressing legal issues today than those, why are those relegated to electives? Why have us take Constitutional Law at all? There is arguably no class with fewer right answers, more muddied jurisprudence, and more probability of rapid paradigm shifts than Con Law. I think professors love to talk about it, but relevance for the daily life of a lawyer is virtually zero. Why were we not required to take Family Law? It's on the Bar Exam, and lawyers are among the most likely to get divorced themselves. Sure most lawyers don't PRACTICE family law...but then why is it on the Bar Exam? Why do we even have a Bar Exam at all? It's nothing like legal work. I don't answer multiple choice questions based on rote memorized rules. I analyze tricky facts and make analogies and arguments. Lots of questions, not a lot of "right" answers, it seems to me.

[@kebab4949]

You should try salt baking a fish, it’s incredible. Other wise known as a salt crust

[@zazope]

I often use baking to describe any cooking in the oven... baked chicken, baked pies... the only difference is you can ALSO call a baked chicken a roasted chicken. No one would ever say roasted bread

[@CyanPhoenix_]

for the teaching part, If I had a teacher like you that gave out As for just doing the work, I would be totally fine with it, as long as I was still getting feedback on what I could be improving upon. I'm not studying for a grade, I'm studying to get better at the thing I want to learn, and I'd imagine most of the people in the arts are there for the same reason (or they just don't know what they want to do with their lives, but those people can also benefit from feedback if what they're doing is not realistically going to be a good career path)

[@debochch]

Thank god you are not studying civil engineering. Imaging if people designing bridges go As for just doing the work.

[@dingo4530]

13:40 "but you wouldn't just double the salt" I totally did with a tsatsiki recipe that I didn't read well enough. Salt meant to draw water out of the cucumbers and then be washed off was all added into the sauce. I had to quadruple the other ingredients. Turned out delicious and voluminous.

[@nickupmann5910]

When I make Tsatsiki I shred the cucumber and press the juice out. If the yogurt is pasty you dont even need to squeeze much water out.

[@rojopantalones9791]

When talking about cooking vs baking, I think you hit the nail on the head in the way I describe the difference myself: Cooking is an art. Baking is a science. While there are chemical reactions happening when you cook, such as the Maillard reaction where proteins and carbs denature and recombine into things like the crust of a loaf of bread or the sear on a steak, it's up to the person cooking when it comes down to how that reaction goes. You can cook something without causing that reaction via, say, sous vide-ing a steak and doing nothing else to it. It will be fully cooked, but definitely will not taste the same as if you seared it afterwards. When baking, it's a controlled chemical reaction. It's why you have to follow the recipe or it won't work right. Your souffle will collapse, your bread won't rise quite right or at all, your creme brulee will break, etc. However, yes, they are their own variety of difficult. You're making food with both actions, but they're almost apples and oranges at times. You can flub a recipe on the stovetop and fix your mistake by either adding things to compensate for that flavor or altering how you're cooking it. You can't do that with baking, as you're changing the recipe, thus changing the chemical composition, and inhibiting the very reaction you're trying to accomplish. However, it takes a certain kind of person to know how to alter a recipe for something you're cooking vs baking to fix a mistake. Sauces can be extremely fickle, especially if I have to make a roux, which I always end up breaking in a new way each time I try. I'll get the heat right but end up stirring too aggressively or fail to account for the decrease in density of my fat, resulting in an imbalance between it and flour. I feel as though everyone has their one thing they're especially good at when it comes to the kitchen, some sort of special talent unique to them. I make three things really well: chili, pancakes, and desserts, for example. My roommate makes an amazing curry and is a far superior baker to me, along with having strong intuitions when it comes to creating new recipes. I think my roommate is a far more creative cook than I am, while he believes that I'm better in that regard. Just last week, while in a strange mood, I cobbled together a pepperoni and gouda fritter recipe from things we had just laying around. I say "cobbled" because the recipe I was following asked for a number of ingredients that we simply didn't have, so I improvised. Swapped eggs for soaked chia seeds, replaced the cottage cheese with gouda, tossed in some diced pepperoni, added a bit of baking powder to replace the effect the eggs would've had in the batter, etc., but that all comes from experience working in professional kitchens and learning from other people. We all have something to offer in the kitchen. It's like my 5th grade music teacher often said, "Everyone can sing. It's about finding the space where you sound the best," which he handily proved to my dad, who'd swear up and down about how bad of a singer he was. He asked my dad to sing something for him, and he played the accompaniment. Suddenly, he says, "Ah, I see the issue you think you have. See, the song is usually played in this key, but you're singing it in THIS key." He changes keys on the piano and, suddenly, my dad's singing voice rings true and it becomes a beautiful song. He then says to my dad, "It's not that you were singing it poorly, just that no one ever played in your key." Nearly made my dad cry. Find your key, the space that you're comfortable in. You'll be surprised to learn what you can accomplish. A natural on the grill or at cooking over an open fire or at turning a recipe completely on its head to create something wholly unique and your own using a combination of flavors people wouldn't expect to work, yet they do. Whether you're baking or cooking, they're still a mouthpiece to use to express something wholly yours.

[@Ariane-Bouchard]

Maybe you could do a video on your greenhouse at some point. You even have lights in there. Sounds like there's probably interesting stuff to learn in there.

[@stevef.8708]

Hell yeah. I’m waiting for this kind of content from Adam.

[@whatby101]

I have a bit of a different perspective on this subject. I’m currently a PhD student of mathematics, and for me mathematics has no formulas to follow. Sometimes there are standard tricks to try, but they may not always work. So mathematics is closer to making new baking recipes than just using old ones. So from my perspective, mathematics is certainly harder than art in some objective sense. That said, I can do mathematics but I can’t do art.

[@bonifaceawa]

I rate this as the best segue into the embedded ad I have happened to see on Adam's channel. [The Trade coffee ad, the segue into the Indeed ad was close to average]

[@ghijkmnop]

RE NFL masurements: There is a THIRD person who is the control. They hold the chain and remain on one of the printed transverse lines on the grid. The markers are stretched from that control point.

[@comlitbeta7532]

"I feel like if we keep persiuing that peculiar question we might create a singularity that sucks in our entire region of the galaxy " Hoooo, so thats the great filter that answers fermy's paradox...

[@veggie62a]

Just the ultra-casual "nice" right at 0:03 was fantastic

[@matthewlesich2840]

Me holding up a Yorkshire pudding: Behold, a baked good

[@appa609]

actual math classes are fairly creative and interpretive. There are infinitely many right proofs and your job is to pull one out of the ether

[@keithjackewicz8423]

Pure mathematicians are not generally the ones who think the humanities are bullshit because gender.

[@dragonwizerd]

Adam's video: Baking vs cooking Adam in the video: So the thing about writing newspaper articles. How do you know they're right? big jokes, love the tangents (as they are always well crafted and illustrative, if indirectly related to the initial topic.) To be fair, you do have "math class vs art class" in the title.

[@theb4r138]

Love that you are covering this topic. I have been thinking about baking vs cooking for quite some time. I feel like baking is constrained by both precision and timing where as cooking is more constrained by just timing and there is lots of room for improvisation and feel. The comparison to art vs math is very apt

[@RiversInTheSky.]

Casserole may as well be it’s own verb. “I’m about to casserole this casserole in the oven.”

[@m.h.6470]

I would define preparing a casserole as backing as well. Also Lasagne or any kind of food with cheese on top you put in the oven is baked IMHO. The act of putting cheese (or cream or white sauce) on top and melting/browning it is called "überbacken" ("baking over") in German.

[@kimdecker8901]

Lasagna is indeed baked. Because, as everyone knows, lasagna is a layer cake!😉😂

[@QuantumJump451]

Gonna add to the chaos with one of my favourite types of recipe - pasta bakes 😋. You cook the pasta in a sauce, transfer to a (usually rectangular) dish, maybe top with cheese, then bake in the oven for about half an hour, possibly finishing off in the broiler. Although that does fit your definition, as it does become a lot more of a solid item that you need to cut, and it's airy in that there are gaps between the pasta left by the sauce drying out.

[@octarinehk]

I came here just to say "pasta bake!"

[@lethaleefox6017]

Baking is harder if you don't have an oven. I do have a couple Dutch ovens and have made cake with them... it takes firing up the outdoor cooking fireplace, picking the Dutch oven to use. I have even did some baking in a solar cooker as an experiment.

[@ConflictedSwitch]

I think baking is more difficult when it comes to developing a recipe. If you're going to develop a certain kind of cake, you'd tweak and modify a recipe that works, adding unknown variables that you may not fully account for. In cooking, you can adjust on the fly whereas baking doesn't allow for that.

[@NormieNeko]

Cooking is great for last minute people who generally do things at random. The stir fry is the ideal dish for that type of person. Even if dealing with meat, I just throw a bunch of meat to smoke for a while, grill it, and use it for multiple meals - plenty of rub and spices. Easy prep. Easy meal-making. Huge room to fix or prevent error in my life. I avoid baking and making desserts. It's never healthy anyway, and I prefer to drink alcohol or use up my calorie budget on meat and dairy. I love salads too much. Breads are whatever. I make cookies and tortillas if I want carbs though. They never look perfect, but they taste fine, lol. Oh well.

[@Aubreykun]

I think it's only "difficult" if you're trying to always get consistent results. It doesn't matter so much if your bread or pie or whatever is too chewy or too flimsy, unless you're trying to do it as "a consistent thing" for others. As long as it tastes good (and you always can add sauce or something if it doesn't) it's a success.

[@brettmajeske3525]

To be precise the French difference is between yeast baking and non-yeast baking. A sweet yeast roll is not pastry, just as a savory pie crust is not baking.

[@alantidwell7889]

This baking dilemma is an interesting question. Is a casserole anything more than an oven-cooked stew? I think we tend to be linguistically lazy and refer to almost anything that is "oven-cooked" as "baked" (Those 2 fewer syllables seem mighty important sometimes 😉). Should "baked" potatoes or apples be more properly referred to as oven-cooked? Would you go to a bakery and expect to find a casserole on display (I don't visit bakeries very often, so I don't know)? Does a biscuit cease being a baked good if I wrap the dough around a stick and cook it over a fire?

[@rorrt]

I always just presumed baking is when you weigh and measure loads of stuff out.. But.. I've made plenty of currys.. I do the most measuring when I make those. 2 pinches of something, 4 knobs of that, 12 splashes of the other..

[@provi480]

I recall a baker in Nanaimo recounting his annoyance with people going in and asking for nanaimo bars, which he did not sell because they are not a baked good - despite usually being found in the bakery section of stores.

[@Erik_Swiger]

Interesting takes. Your video on the pizza dough comparison was fascinating. It's the sort of thing I'd like to try but can never get around to doing. I've always thought of cooking as tinkering in the garage, while baking is actual engineering. I'm great at cooking, but only recently have I even started to come close to successful in baking.

[@MorgenPeschke]

Ok, so I have thoughts on grading 😅 I think that, within the current paradigm, the what seems to work the best is for a teacher to lay out their minimal criteria in their rubric and exercise their subjective opinion *only in the students' favor*. This way you set up a system under which students should only ever be pleasantly surprised, and if they're unpleasantly surprised there's concrete things you can suggest for them to improve (in a conversation that's more likely to uncover what they misunderstood). If we're not limited to the current grading paradigm, one of my professors had a really interesting question: "why is it acceptable to leave a class, if you only master 3/4ths of the material?" He had a point, or at least I think so (though arguably mostly for courses in your field of study). Instead of paying for time, why not pay for instruction instead, and you move on once you've learned the material you paid to learn? That way your degree or certificate means "this person knows what we teach about this" instead of "this person knows at least 3/4th of what we teach about this."

[@RonJohn63]

4:35 Baking is, without a doubt, 100% chemistry. Cooking is just "warming stuff up, with a little chemistry on the side".

[@robertwilcox9566]

Hey Adam! Big coffee nerd here! That method of brewing would fall under the general name "immersion brew," just like a French press. You can actually get a much cleaner cup (less sediment) if you just let the coffee sediment sink to the bottom then very carefully decant the top through a strainer. Give it a try!

[@forserious7765]

I would’ve loved to have taken a class from you! So thoughtful.

[@yourguysheppy]

Love the laid back but still educational format for a lot of these podcasts. Keep it up dude Humans are remarkably talented at coming up with concepts to confuse ourselves with, aren't we?

[@davidcarbone3385]

One of the most fun classes I took was a required graduate class in educational philosophy. 3 senior professors and 3 students, lol. I was afraid it was going to be the toughest class, but the senior professors were laid back and easy going, made the class fairly interesting and fun. Our last class was at a new Indian restaurant in northern NY State where the owner brought us into the kitchen to show us how the chefs (cooks?) could cut-up a whole chicken in a few seconds. They also showed us the tandoori ovens and gave us the recipe for the food we ate that night. I still have the recipe and have made tandoori chicken several times. As a part time, community college professor the past 25 years teaching college courses in the state prisons, I was compelled to use the test banks developed by the publisher of the text books for those courses. Those tests were usually t/f, m/c, fill in the blank. Very easy and objective to grade. But it was fun when I could give short answer tests and exams. The responses had to have a certain structure and touch certain points, so it wasn't as hard as grading English Composition essays, which were dreadful and painful. I did fail about a dozen of the nearly 1100 inmate students I've had, but that's because they obviously cheated but mostly because they voluntarily did not complete the assignments. But, it was fun and rewarding to see the other students learn and grow both as a student and as a person, because with a college student development background I made sure to appropriately incorporate human development lessons within each class even though it was not part of the standard curriculum.

[@alejandrodominguez6030]

Adam, you just have a way of bringing up these wonderful introspective reflections within topics or episodes that seem so basic. I almost skipped this one and I am so glad I didn't!

[@TheCadburyFiend]

37min in, and this is great, but I could have sworn I didn't finish that baking // cooking podcast...oh

[@JoshuaJeremiah]

Love the intro!! I'm a professional opera singer and i prefer to bake... excited to see where the rest of the episode leads.

[@themastermason1]

My bachelor's is in Mechanical engineering and what is cooking if not Culinary engineering?

[@LarkyLuna]

Math subjects are weirdly not clear cut, specially when you go deep enough When you peel back, the basic rules of math are all made up with no proof It's basically "this is working so far" When you do math research, there isn't a book telling you which ruleset to use, which math will work better. There are hints and you can get an intuition, but sometimes you're a month deep into papers and you find out graph theory would have worked so much better from the start

[@StaphyJr]

This has been probably my favorite episode of your podcast 👍

[@dorothitwagstaff6513]

45:18 regarding your point on Paul McCartney: Keeping in mind that I've never even listened to his music, I think it's more than fair to say that many artists further into their careers make music for purposes other than making smash hits. Many artists, some of my favorites included, have over time developed their sounds to be less popular, even with myself, as they challenge themselves to makes things weirder, more interesting or more complex. Perhaps it could be argued that after writing many hits, someone can reach their personal threshold of fame and fortune that would allow them to focus on other things. And thus, perhaps some people really DO know exactly how to write a smash hit (or at least have a much more focused understanding of how to do it than the average creative person).

[@Justin_Alfeche]

Was really hoping for a "And why are they called cookies?!" rant.

[@stentor1980]

With regard to the distinction between baking and roasting, here’s my thought. Roasting, both originally and in many modern contexts, refers to cooking over an open fire, generally using some sort of apparatus to rotate the food. Baking referred to any cooking done in an oven. It’s worth remembering that through much of the ancient, medieval and early modern eras ovens were professional equipment rarely found in households. Over time cooking with open flame became less common and stoves with ovens became more common. Eventually, in the late 19th and earth 20th century, homes without open fires for cooking became the rule. People, however, still like roasted food. So cooks figured out how to make something similar to roasted dishes that didn’t actually require an open flame. They used ovens. So my belief is that if a dish could only possibly be made in an oven, it’s baking. If a dish could theoretically be made over an open fire, it’s roasting. And to answer your question, casseroles are baked for that reason. Try cooking a casserole over an open flame and tell me how it goes.

[@Craxin01]

This whole episode smacks of the whole, "is a hotdog a sandwich" argument and I am down for it! There are edge cases. There are baked pastas, baked fish, baked casseroles. Language is a funny thing and there is no hyper exclusive definition for any word that has no exemptions or edge cases.

[@ThurmanJamison]

I just want to thank you. this was the best thing I've watched all week. It was great as always but the ending was amazing and made me laugh out loud a few times :)

[@jdgran2439]

I love your videos so much! I swear though, you must have smoked a huge blunt before this one. Only a true pot head could make such a wonderful comparison between baking and cooking. 🤣🤣🤣

[@brumm0m3ntum94]

in my mind, baking is a subset of cooking, cooking is preparing food with heat and baking is cooking in an oven and/or with hot air + burying things in hot coals being baking as well, whereas roasting is cooking over direct flame, like a fish on a stick over a fire also, a verb being in a food’s name doesn’t necessarily mean the food is cooked by that verb, you might bake some roast potatoes to cook them asking if something is cooking OR baking is like asking if coho is fish or salmon, is it baking or is it some other manner of cooking also waffles aren’t a baked thing imo and of course, there are probably exceptions but it’s 1 in the morning and i can’t think of them

[@eliseleonard3477]

You also bake shepherd’s pie, Mac and cheese, and casseroles generally. You don’t roast them. 😮 And if it’s a whole potato you bake it, but if it’s cut, it’s roasted. 😳

[@dstinnettmusic]

Billy Joel has the formula for writing hit songs. Dude had a catalogue of “one hit wonder” style songs that makes me wonder if he is some time traveler with a cassette tape from an alternate universe with all the greatest hits from their 1970s and 80s

[@TristenHarris777]

Adam I would call your method immersion brew, the umbrella term for French press, Cowboy coffee, Cupping and any method where the coffee and water mix with each other. Juxtapose to percolation, any method where water passes through coffee, V60, chemex, mocha pot, espresso I would also think an appropriate label would be "Steeping"

[@Aubreykun]

If going by old herbalist terminology (and coffee is plant material) - a french press is an infusion, closer to tea, but cowboy coffee is a decoction. The difference is in whether the water is boiled separately from the plant or with with the plant, which is why cowboy coffee and french press coffee can be so different. Most is percolation though, you're correct on that.

[@רוןבלומרוזן]

I think cooking is harder than cooking, when i go to a restaurant and order a dessert and it's amazing my mind is not blown but if i eat some kind of good meat or stew it can really make me feel something and i think it's hard to do something like that

[@purplegill10]

33:58 it's funny you mention that because Jon Bois did a video, and I apologize for forgetting which one, where he measured where balls usually end up in american football and there's a HUGE bias towards saying the ball was downed in 5 yard increments because he hypothesized refs tend to unintentionally put the ball where the lines are. Also, here's something to ponder in addition to the ending casserole question: Which is more of a baked good, a lasagna, or baked beans?

[@HarryS77]

+1 for lasagna. Baked beans are just simmered in an oven. Not all baked beans are baked, but all lasagnas are.

[@purplegill10]

@@SimuLord Thanks

[@ArtistX-JRC]

Great episode Old Man Ragusea. I don't say this to kiss butt, just, your point of views for the most part here, nigh all of them, are thoughts that I could hear myself arriving at or stating.

[@ninjarooster9258]

Episode 69! Me: “nice” Adam Ragusea: “nice”

[@Colinthecasualcook]

I think baking seems more difficult because you don’t really see if you messed up until after the food has baked and it’s done. Then you pull it from the oven and it’s either how you wanted it or it’s not. Whereas in cooking, there are lots of finicky techniques that are challenging like emulsions or working with hydrocolloids. But you can make adjustments on the fly when cooking and save a would be disaster. Perhaps real baking pros can see a potential issue before putting the item in the oven. But unfortunately I’m not there yet.

[@yougotkicked]

As an engineering major, csci specifically, I too would probably rather take the F than approach a stranger on the street and try to interview them. Calling them on the phone? Somehow worse. Weirdly, I'm not even particularly introverted or socially awkward, those things specifically just feel remarkably intimidating.

[@CssHDmonster]

to me, baking is more of a science so i hate it cuz its mostly measuring and research while cooking is more of a feeling thing alongside lifelong knowledge

[@CssHDmonster]

@@SimuLord im such a bad baker that i even failed to bake properly a store-bought brownie mix despite following the instructions, baking hates me and i hate it back

[@Aubreykun]

@@SimuLord You can bake imprecisely, it just won't come out "exactly as planned" - it should still be edible and delicious though. And plenty of old people (and people throughout history) bake without precision and just going by routine. There's not really any kind of divide outside a commercial/professional setting. The only real difference is that baking tends to be labor intensive and readily available from supermarkets. So baking usually means making entire batches of whatever it is you're doing, and if it's far from how you intended then it will seem like you just spent an hour making a week's worth of 'meh' things instead of picking up some from the store.

[@ghijkmnop]

My degrees came from Art Schools, and part of the required curricula were STEM-style classes (Physics, Anatomy, Geometry, et al). Even though I was and am a decent enough artist/designer to get my degrees, the STEM classes were considerably easier to "get," because there were concrete answers and ways to get to them were defined. Deciding on a dynamic figure-ground relationship fell more into the Theoretical realm than my actual STEM classes were.

[@pennyfarting]

I think this is also why a lot of people may prefer baking recipes, because it's the same thing. All the measurements are given in precise quantities by metric weight, steps are laid out with an exact methodology in a very specific order for concrete reasons to achieve specific results, and if something doesn't come out quite right, you can usually pinpoint exactly the reason why by carefully reexamining your method and parameters. Sometimes relying on exactly measured and empirically proven methods feels a lot less daunting than having to rely on your confidence in your own intuition, judgment, and mechanical skill for a good result, especially when you're just starting out.

[@ghijkmnop]

@@pennyfarting While I agree with your argument, I'll never agree that baking needs to be exact to the gram. Pretty much until KZbin became a thing, people had been baking for centuries using volume measures. Baking is exact--but not THAT exact. It just needs to be repeatable, which is why everyone needs a scale now--the unique, unrepeatable "way Memere used to make it" is being relegated to lore.

[@pennyfarting]

@@ghijkmnop right, and that's kind of my point. Baking doesn't _always_ require that degree of exactness, but sometimes people, especially those who are less experienced, prefer that kind of exactness and consistent replicability because the uncertainty of doing it the other way feels daunting. It's definitely how I felt when I first started cooking, and it's also how I felt about my subjects in high school. I'm definitely not a STEM guy, but I did way better in precalculus as a high school senior than in any other subject because it relied entirely on using precisely prescribed methods to obtain consistent, repeatable, objectively correct results. Teenage me found that much easier than, for example, writing persuasive essays, because that relied on confidence in my own ability to convince someone else that an idea _I came up with_ is correct, which felt much scarier than just relying on what somebody else has already definitively _proven_ is correct.

[@ileutur6863]

​@@ghijkmnop But everything in STEM requires so much fucking math. My brain hurts just remembering it

[@Aubreykun]

@@ileutur6863 Like baking, plenty of people do handywork (which is a subset) and engineering without actually using math. Engineerguy's "Building a Cathedral without Science or Mathematics" video explains this pretty well, and there's a book called "From Truths to Tools" by Jim Tolpin (Lost Art Press) that goes into many more techniques. Lots of old construction was made by measuring with strings and pins!

[@PockASqueeno]

“…kind of like male and female…” 😂 You lost me there, Adam! 🤣

[@TylerMcHenry]

The first down / grading rubric analogy is even more apt if you consider the issue of where the ball itself is when it is measured. The chain procedure gives a very precise measurement, but the position of the ball being measured is based on the referee's eyeballed guess at where approximately the ball stopped going forward on the previous play. So rather than a measurement, it's more a mechanism for generating a random tiebreaker when things get close, to avoid putting the onus on the ref to directly judge it a first down or not. Ditto rubrics -- something to point to as being responsible when you've made a judgement call that's more arbitrary than you want to admit.

[@donotlike4anonymus594]

I'm pretty sure the common definition of baking is that the baked good expends... so that's why you use hot air Unless you want your expendable pouring out of the pot Sure some things like vinegar or milk will poff out But you get what I mean If it expends its baking if not it's roasting The same way you can air fry dought Donuts for example don't really expend (not that you can air fry the liquidity batter) The language evolves but that's the most accurate definition I can come up with For example there's this old Russian biscuit which's made in oven but not considered to be baked It's not so much bread not so much cookie You can bake bread and it expends but when you heat it up again you toast it...

[@haldir108]

When Adam started talking about changing liquids and solids, it's mirroring Kirk Sorensen (and others!) talking about why Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors are cooler (figuratively) than other Nuclear Reactors

[@Hi_Im_Akward]

I do use the term "bake" when I bake a lasagna or casserole or chicken if it's in the oven. But if I were to describe what I'm doing as a whole, if it's for a meal its "cooking" generally (because the prep involves more than just the baking or roasting) and if its for dessert or pastry it's "baking". Although I would argue that I probably wouldn't actually use the word "baking" if I were making a desert that requires something not involved with the oven. For example pudding, I don't bake pudding, I don't bake icecream. And for no bake dessert I also probably would not use the word "baking". I would probably just describe it as "making a desert" or something. I think the difference in my head largely has to do with if it's a meal or not. And in that vein, for pancakes or waffles I would say "making pancakes" "frying pancakes". Baking or cooking both seem improper. And waffles feel similarly too? Especially since waffles require such specialized equipment. And I would also add that "cooking" has to involve actually adding heat because I wouldn't "cook a sandwich" or "cook a salad" unless either of those required heat? Grilled cheese sure but not a cold turkey sandwich..

[@pssurvivor]

i disagree that the judgment of logical argument is arbitrary. there are certain rules of logic. if it were all arbitrary the whole profession of law would fall apart

[@minhoca4269]

as a mathematics phd student that likes A LOT to study social sciences AND cooking and baking... this analogy is quite clever

[@tHEonLYfiRstONE]

I really enjoyed this podcast

[@something2424]

Clearly pot pies are a type of sandwich

[@RamadaArtist]

Between math, art, cooking and baking... baking is the only one of the four that I always need to use instructions, so it's clearly the hardest. For the rest of them I can usually just make it up most of the time.