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[cdk]

On Usenet* there was a thread about a no-knead bread recipe. Some people had a lot of success with it, some people weren't so impressed, and one dude couldn't make it work *at all*, and was very upset eager to let everyone know how smart he was. So he responded listing all the things he had done to fix the recipe - changing proportions, adding

Comments

[yonihamagid]

I've always prefered to follow recipes exactly the first time through, then start riffing on them. Occasionally I'll have to adjust because whatever the recipe calls for isn't available because it's either exotic or I'm way to lazy for another trip to the store.

[metaphortunate]

I do try to follow it the first time. It's surprisingly hard.

[thespian]

Have you read 'Ratio' by Michael Ruhlman?

[cdk]

I have not.

[thespian]

it explains interesting things about how, in food science, everything is not proportional, and discusses a bit of how to properly rescale (in this case, I'd suspect that it's because you were measuring eggs by # and flour by weight, it skewed). But it's a great book if you're interested in learning a very different way of approaching recipes/ingredients.

[cdk]

Based on my subsequent experimentation, it's working just fine, as long as I don't screw with it by adding water. 1 egg and 100g comes out exactly the same as 2 eggs and 200g. I haven't tried a full 5 egg/500g batch, though.

Out of curiosity, how else might one scale it? I mean, obviously there's some regression to the mean going on when you use 5 eggs, so you'll have less variance with 5 than with 1, so I guess I could weigh the eggs and then use exactly twice that weight of flour, but it seems to be pretty forgiving. EDIT: of variances of +/- 5%, that is. I probably added about 15mL of water when I tried to "fix" it the first time through.