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By Kelly Stewart

In the home kitchen, there are two kinds of people: cooks and bakers. For cooks, recipes are mere suggestions, flexible in their ingredients and proportions. For bakers, on the other hand, recipes are gospel truth, precise in their measurements and techniques.

Me, I’m definitely a cook. I enjoy the spontaneity of tweaking a recipe or making one up based on what’s in the fridge. But the downside to being a cook is that, no matter how often I’ve prepared a particular bread or pastry recipe, I can’t guarantee the same results every time. I envy my grandmother, who can whip together dough for dozens of dinner rolls without even measuring the flour. She just knows when the dough looks and feels “right.”

After a recent cheese-puff disaster — my typically lofty gougeres came out of the oven as flat as cookies — I decided to become less of a cook and more of a baker. So I quizzed six baking experts about ingredients and techniques.

Essential ingredients for baking, clockwise from top left: eggs, butter, milk, vegetable oil, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, yeast, and flour.

The secret to successful baking? It’s all in the chemistry. And here’s the scientific lowdown on how each basic baking ingredient functions in the kitchen.

This article was first published in Saveur in Issue #24

The first time I saw a home cook ''open'' phyllo—the papery pastry dough essential to such classic Greek dishes as baklava and spanakópitta (spinach pie), I was visiting a monastery in Metsovo, a scenic mountain village in the Ípiros region of northwestern Greece. Ípiros is pítta country—not pita, the ubiquitous Middle Eastern flat bread, but pítta, which is the word Greeks use to refer to a whole inventory of savory pies, whose ingredients are tucked between buttered or oiled layers of crisp phyllo. There are literally hundreds of variations, with fillings of greens, cheeses, eggs, grains, sometimes meat, and just about anything else the area's bounty can provide.

by Beth Kracklauer
This article was first published in Saveur in Issue #115

Found on "The Kitchn" site - a very basic introduction to the anatomy of a pie crust.

At its most basic, pie crust is nothing more than flour, fat, and liquid. But if that's all it is, why is pie crust so notoriously difficult to make by hand? Let's take a look:

Create delicious crumbles
by Terry Farris

Spice up your crumbles with nuts, crushed biscuits and rich brown sugars!

If you were asked to make a list of your favourite autumn and winter puddings, crumble would surely come near the top. Maybe it’s the contrast between the crunchy top and the tart fruit underneath; perhaps it’s because it’s so luscious served piping hot with cold cream poured over, or maybe it’s the anticipation of those midnight raids for spoonfuls of chilled leftovers straight from the fridge.

Pastie or Pasty

These are basically individual pies filled with meats and vegetables that are cooked together. The identifying feature of the Cornish pasty is really the pastry and it’s crimping.

By ANDY NEWMAN

Clouds of apple scent drift across the concrete plaza, drawing young and old alike to the tiny white cottage recently sprung up in front of the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Scrunching noses to the windowpane, they peer past the gingham curtains, as if looking back in time, to see a woman in a dotted red dress and an apron leaning over a counter and rolling out a crust.

Behind the woman, a full-size apple pie bakes in a little oven. When the pie is done, the woman opens a side window and sets it on the sill to cool.

The tableau may be an art piece. But the pie is real, and it's yours for the taking, if you dare.