SC - Cooking by "hand"

[Philip & Susan Troy]

"Decker, Terry D." wrote:
> 
> > Mordonna22 at aol.com wrote:
> > >
> > > When I am cooking creatively, I very seldom measure anything.
> >
> > Yes. Professional cooks (although rarely bakers) do this all the time,
> > because it saves on washing the little spoons and cuppy things, and time
> > hunting them up and then putting them down.
> >
> > Adamantius
> >
> In baking, you can estimate quantities for small batches.  Most people do
> this anyway getting all those spoons and cuppy things dirty in the process
> without realizing they are approximating rather than being accurate.  I
> occasionally make bread by estimating the ingredients, mixing my liquor,
> then adding the solid ingredients slowly until the dough reaches a soft ball
> that can be kneaded.
> 
> If you're after precision, measuring the ingredients by weight is the
> method.  It's the only way to accurately machine produce commercial
> quantities of dough.
> 
> Bear

Oh, yeah! That was pretty much my point. I measure by eye quite a bit
when baking, but then nowadays I'm not getting paid to create a
perfectly consistent product. When I was, I measured most things by weight.

I think my favorite thing to watch in this regard was either Julia Child
or Graham Kerr (in early incarnations) measuring various (usually
alcoholic) liquids by glugs.

My other favorite extreme case of this was a guy named Titus Chan, who,
back in the sixties, on what I believe to have been the first Chinese
cooking program on U.S. television hosted by a Chinese person, used to
advise measuring oil heat by sticking your hand in the oil: if you
immediately heard a scream it was hot enough.
  
Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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