I’m an avid baker; I quit my job at a pharmaceutical research company because I harbored dreams of being a pastry chef. What I found most mesmerizing about pastry was the transformation of seemingly innocuous ingredients like flour and sugar to something spectacular, a work of art like the opera cake.
I found something else extremely interesting – the infinite number of possibilities, a multiverse. A slight change could lead to an extremely different outcome. An airy sponge cake would rise from a thick emulsified batter when placed in a heated oven for a short period. But it wasn’t always reproducible if I moved to a different apartment or baked it at someone else’s home. Sometimes, I’d need to wait longer for the right color and texture to develop, or I might have to watch out for the cake cooking too fast on the surface while the inside wasn’t fully cooked.
IMO, it’s always a good idea to calibrate the appliances and measurement tools you use to ensure they’re functioning properly and giving you the correct values. Last week, we looked at weighing scales and cup measures and saw how errors creep up. This week, it’s all about ovens. Are the dial and display actually correct?
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