Chemistry You Can Eat

Baking is different from cooking because it depends on precise chemical ratios. You can improvise a stir-fry, but change the baking powder in a cake recipe and you get a brick.

The three pillars of baking chemistry are leavening (what makes things rise), gluten development (what gives structure), and sugar chemistry (browning and tenderness). Every baking disaster traces back to one of these three systems going wrong.