Untested recipes: a rant
I made something yesterday that I have been thinking of making for several years. I even had to buy a special baking pan to make it. The recipe is from a well-known Italian cookery magazine, Cucina Moderna.
The recipe was never tested. It could not possibly have been tested before it was published. I don’t know how they made that photo in the magazine. It’s the right shape and size, but it can’t be this recipe, because this recipe failed at every step.
When I added the amount of water asked for it wasn’t enough. I didn’t get a dough, but dry crumbs. I had to add an additional 100 ml of water before I got a dough.
The cooking time was inadequate and there was no way to know that. At the temperature and time in the recipe the center was still uncooked. It needed as much as another 15-20 minutes in the oven at that temperature. When I checked to see what another recipe might have suggested for cooking time, I discovered that for a similar recipe, the temperature would have been 20°C higher and the cooking time 15 minutes or so longer.
I can’t tell you how angry it makes me to find untested recipes. People who want to cook shouldn’t have to be discouraged by a failure that is not theirs but which they take to be theirs. I know I didn’t screw up that bread. The recipe was no good!
So anyway, I’ll publish a corrected version shortly, but I needed to get this off my chest.
Oh oh…I always loathe having to be like the recipe police, but sometimes an occasion (such as this!) warrants the flashing lights and sirens. I wish you had given us a photo!
Everyone seems in a rush these days and magazines in particular seem to succumb to the temptation to just ‘get something out there.’ I’d call the circulation department and tell them you feel this issue was a lost cause because of the magazine’s failure to post a useful recipe (i.e. not because you didn’t agree with something in it) and ask to have your money back, preferably by extending your subscription.
How often does that happen? I don’t consider myself a very experienced cook and I always just blame myself when something doesn’t turn out right. Maybe there have been times that it wasn’t my fault.
KC´s last blog ..Pink
Judging from this recipe many times it would not have been your fault. Although I’m not a baker, I do make bread as readily as I make pasta, and I know what the dough should look like. This dough failed that.
Rowena, I am going to photograph it and publish it tomorrow and anyone curious enough can try the original version just by asking for it.
The first change will be to use not the special form requested, but a tube pan. This very heavy dough would cook in smaller quantities, it just won’t when it is as big as a bucket.
Buck, I don’t subscribe to this. There are so many cookery magazines here that I am not very faithful.
That is too bad after the anticipation and mouth watering over the recipe! We went up to the hills to the apple farms yesterday, and bought a beautiful LOOKING apple pie. Neither crust nor filling TASTED good! It was very disappointing. Now I will bake a good pie!
I wish I were there to eat it with you, Palma, Truly!