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If you've been cooking long enough, you know you develop a sixth sense in the kitchen.

With three dishes on the stove, one in the oven, and more ingredients on the cutting board.

There are a lot of things going on.

But good cooks have a singular awareness of what everything is doing by the sounds, the

aromas in the air.

A quick glance, a subtle touch, a shake of the pan, these are the critical

data absorbed and calculated on in the chef's mind. You also develop a keen sense of taste.

One small sample and you can not only know what a dish

tastes like now but what it'll taste like when ready, sometimes in hours time.

You'll know how to adjust with salt, acid, heat, how to add savory, sweet, or unctuous notes.

Cooking is dancing with meat and vegetables, with its own music and rhythm, but baking, well, baking

is something altogether different.

If cooking is an art, baking is a science.

It requires more rigor, more prescribed methods, less wild experimentation.

That doesn't mean baking is any less a creative endeavor. It does

mean that I'm not that good at it. But maybe I can get better if I knew more about

the history of baking and cakes in particular.

So on today's Saturday matinee, we're bringing you an episode from the podcast,

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