Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog, The Science of Cooking!

Baking with my bird Trouble

My name is Sarah, and I am a third year Nutrition Science major who loves food!  Preparing food, however, is another story.  Recently, I moved out of the dorms and into an apartment with a place where the magic happens, the kitchen.  I wasn’t intimidated at first. In fact, grocery shopping on my own for the first time was actually quite exciting! However, after the first week of school, I had burned my fried zucchini repeatedly  and failed to make a proper white sauce three times, not to mention that half the produce in my refrigerator went bad before I could even use it. Suddenly, cooking didn’t seem so fun after all, and I converted to the mac-and-cheese diet.

Despite this, all hope was not lost, thanks to my food chemistry class (a must-take for all true gourmands). By learning about the properties of foods, I began to realize that cooking does not require some elusive set of superpowers. It’s science, chemistry.  A cookbook is like a lab manual, and if proper techniques are followed, the ingredients will react in predictable ways. For instance, when you knead bread, the proteins in the dough form structures that create small air pockets. These trap carbon dioxide created by yeast, and the bread rises. Knead too little and the proteins won’t form enough structure. Kneed too much and the air pockets will be tiny, making the bread too dense. There was something to this. There was potential to learn.

And so I invite you to join me as I puruse books, websites, and articles to master the art of cooking by understanding the science of cooking. With a little research, perhaps I can transform from rhinocerous in the kitchen to chef extraordinaire! Eat, drink, and be merry in the kitchen!

Sarah