Hello everyone and welcome back to our space dedicated to baking science!
Today I’m particularly excited because I’m launching a project that is very dear to my heart, a new column that I hope will become a reference point for all of us enthusiasts: “Ingredients Under the Lens”.
Baking science: cover for the “Forno Onesto” manifesto by Katia Oldani.
Where did this idea come from? From the deepest conviction that guides all my work and the Forno Onestophilosophy: to do better, we must first understand. Pastry, bread-making, and the broader art of baking are not magic formulas, but a wonderful balance of science, technique, and creativity. And at the center of this balance are the ingredients themselves.
For example, we take them for granted. We use butter, flours, yeasts, eggs, sugar… but do we truly know their nature? Do we know why they behave in a certain way, why a dough sometimes “splits,” a bread fails to rise, or why a small variation can radically change the final result?
Therefore, in this column, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We will put, one by one, a single ingredient “under the magnifying lens” to uncover all its secrets. We will analyze it with a dual perspective:
The Technical Eye of Baking Science:
We will do an in-depth analysis. We will draw on food chemistry and physics to unveil the mechanisms that govern each ingredient’s behavior.
Baking Science in Simple Words:
The translation of these scientific concepts into practical, useful, and applicable advice for everyone, in the lab or in the home kitchen.
Ultimately, the goal of this journey into baking science is ambitious and exciting. We want to build a solid foundation of knowledge together. A foundation that makes us more conscious artisans of the art of baking, free to experiment and able to solve problems with know-how, not by “trial and error.”
I want this space to be a shared journey. A place where curiosity is welcome and where every question helps us grow. Because true mastery lies not in perfectly executing a recipe, but in mastering the elements that compose it.
With my usual enthusiasm,
Katia Oldani, Biologist Pastry Chef