Some love to cook, some love to bake—some both. But what is the difference and what attracts people to which one?
There are people who like rules, direction and precision, and others who prefer freedom, spontaneity and adaptation. For a number of us, life is about balancing them out. When it comes to the kitchen, this often influences what people like to make and how.
The common saying when comparing cooking and baking is that baking is science and cooking is art.
Baking requires exact measurements, timings and temperatures. Throwing flour, sugar, butter and eggs into a bowl and mixing them can make brownies, cookies or cake, depending on the heat and ratios used. You can experiment, but the scientific formula remains fairly rigid. Messing with a recipe if you don’t understand the science behind it can be the difference between something rising beautifully in the oven or falling flat in both appearance and taste.
Cooking gives the person more autonomy. You ask 100 people how they make shortbread and their recipes will be fairly similar. However, if you asked 100 people how they make chili, there would be far more differences.
Cooking relies on flavour profiles, which can often be reached through various means. It also relies heavily on personal taste and preferences. Generally speaking, people who prefer cooking over baking do so because they enjoy being able to go off-script and add their personality to their recipes.
This isn’t to say there’s no overlap between the two, just that they work differently. Using precision to get a perfect flavour balance is different to using precision to get a perfectly baked lava cake. There can also be a lot of adaptation and creativity with baking; it’s just more difficult to do, especially for novices, and there’s less leeway in doing so.
Ultimately, those who like to follow recipes, to the letter, tend to enjoy baking while those who like to be more creative tend to enjoy cooking—and overachievers will often like both.
The perfect end result of cooking and baking are different. Although presentation is important in cooking as a profession, how the food looks doesn’t define if it is well executed. Flavour is the key factor. You can argue that texture and other factors do too, but it isn’t as definitive. When it comes to baking, structure is what defines perfection.
This isn’t the same as presentation, but it does include texture. Flavour is, of course, important, but it isn’t as definitive a point. If you overcook brownies, the texture changes and they are no longer brownies. It doesn’t matter how amazing they taste, it doesn’t change that the composition is no longer that of a brownie.
People who love to do cooking and baking are often seeking perfection in all things: structure, flavour, texture, and normally presentation too. They are the people who love educating themselves in different disciplines like learning multiple instruments or practising several languages at once on Duolingo. They also are likely to be the people who don’t enjoy answering questions that force them to choose a favourite, such as Marvel vs. DC, or The Lord of The Rings vs. Harry Potter. They prefer not having limitations, including when it comes to making food.
I love being in the kitchen. From cooking three-course meals, to baking sweet treats. I even love making my own hot sauce and other condiments. I am also neurodivergent which, for me, means many contradictory feelings. I love structure but I also love freedom and spontaneity.
I wouldn’t say I prefer cooking to baking, but I would certainly say I am better at the former. My patience and discipline aren’t always as sharp as what is required for baking, and that can lead to inconsistent results. Cooking is more forgiving, and for that reason many people will gravitate to it more than baking.
In essence, I would say I lean towards the overachiever personality in the kitchen … I just don’t necessarily have the skills to back it up.
When it comes to cooking, I have a good idea of what flavours and ingredients complement each other. For that reason, when trying a new recipe, I’ll often look at several rather than just one. I note the similarities so I have an idea of cooking times, techniques and unavoidable ingredients. I then look at the differences of each, decide which changeable factors I like or dislike, and build my own recipe from it. I will sometimes even re-evaluate the unchanging factors from the recipes and see how far I can stretch and reshape them. This, of course, isn’t recommended if you are trying to make an authentic traditional dish, but it is a fun, experimental way to cook otherwise.
This leads to the next personality in the kitchen—those who love to be in the kitchen regardless of the end results. For them it is more about the journey and having fun. This fun usually ends in a lot of mess and dirty utensils! This can overlap with the other personalities but should still be considered different, the same way as artistic personalities and creative personalities intersect but aren’t the same. I would like to think of myself as this type, but my perfectionism gets in the way!
The final kitchen personality group worth mentioning are those who hate to make food altogether. You may think of this personality type as being pessimistic, overly utilitarian or perhaps negative in some way. Others may see them as lazy or scared of failing. However, you shouldn’t make assumptions and should judge people on a case-by-case basis. I, for one, always ensure to do this in spite of the overwhelming evidence I have so far supporting those claims and feeling like most people who don’t like to cook are dinner party poopers …
Of course this is an oversimplification and the world is far more nuanced than I have made it seem. Baking in itself is a type of cooking, so one could argue these are all moot points. To this I say that’s a classic baker’s way of thinking and you should take everything I’ve said with a pinch of salt!
