Pro tip: stop washing your mixing bowls with soap between every batch of cookies

I watched a new baker at our community kitchen scrub her bowl spotless between each batch of dough last Saturday - took her 20 extra minutes for no reason. A quick wipe with a dry towel between batches of similar flavors keeps the gluten development consistent and saves your hands from cracking. Anyone else notice how over-cleaning actually messes with your dough's texture?

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lilyfisher2mo ago

Oh man, this is so true and it applies to way more than just baking. I notice people do this with cast iron pans too, scrubbing them down like they're stainless steel and then wondering why everything sticks. Or washing wooden cutting boards with tons of soap until they're bone dry and warped. It's like we've been taught that clean means stripped of all character, but a little seasoning or residue actually does the heavy lifting. Sometimes the best tool maintenance is just leaving well enough alone.

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the_logan2mo ago

My grandmother had a cast iron skillet from like 1942 that she never washed with soap, just wiped it out and put it back on the stove. My mom inherited it and scrubbed it down because she thought it was dirty, and now it's just a rusty paperweight on her counter. @lilyfisher you're right that we've been conditioned to think everything needs to be sanitized to death, but that old pan had layers of flavor built up from decades of bacon and cornbread. People don't realize that some things get better with a little grime, like a good leather jacket or a pair of work boots that have finally broken in. We need to stop trying to reset everything to factory condition and just let things breathe.

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