Recipe Format
Recipe Style
When I began the project of hand writing the recipes for my Martha’s Vineyard pastry shop, Seven Layers, I wrote out the detailed instructions in a step-by-step numerical manner. I have no recollection of any thought or analysis that went into this approach, it just seemed the natural way to document a recipe.
It turned out the format worked very well. In the busy work flow of the shop, I could look at a recipe and quickly see the process as well as my highlighted tips. Additionally, my workers, not as familiar with the recipes, found the format easy to follow and identify any step where help or further explanation was needed.
I have continued this recipe style for The Friday Baking Project recipes. The objective is to explain every recipe step in a clear, succinct manner to help you understand the process. In comparison to traditionally written recipes, it may appear that there are more steps, but traditional recipes contain multiple steps within each numbered paragraph.
Ingredients Grouping
Recipes proceed in stages, with ingredients being initially combined with other ingredients in a specific manner, such as creaming butter and sugar, or melting chocolate with small amount of water or butter. The ingredients in The Friday Baking Project recipes are grouped accordingly, which helps in following the recipe progression.
For example:
6 oz (170 g) 56% to 64% chocolate, pastilles or chopped into small pieces
6 oz (170 g) unsalted butter, room temperature
4 large egg yolks
½ cup (3.6 oz / 103 g) sugar
¼ tsp vanilla extract
Measurements
The Friday Baking Project recipes contains volume (cups, tablespoons), American weight, and metric weight measurements for most ingredients. For items such as chocolate, only the weights are included.
When the original recipes were in weight measurements only, effort was made to accurately determine the corresponding volume measurement. This explains ingredient measurements such as ¼ cup + 1 tbl, or 1 cup less 2 tbl.
I do recommend purchasing a kitchen scale and working with weight measurements as much as possible as weight is more accurate, faster, and less messy. More on using weight measurements in a future blog.
Baking Methods
Wherever appropriate, the recipe heading includes the baking method utilized. The document Baking Methods in the Baking Notes page contains an outline on different methods.
Each baking method, indeed, all baking, rely on a set of fundamental methods and skills, such as creaming butter and sugar, whipping egg whites and heavy cream to various stages, folding beaten whites into other ingredients, cutting butter into flour. Learning these methods and skills is the key to success with even the most difficult recipe.