Baking Vs. Cooking: What’s Easier for Beginners?

Baking
Photo by tabitha turner on Unsplash

Baking and cooking are both two very expansive branches of the culinary arts, and neither of them should be taken lightly. However, if you’re a beginner in the kitchen and you don’t know where to start, there are easy recipes you can make in both avenues. So which one is easier to start with? There is an obvious answer… but it depends.

Baking is Precise

Most people veer towards the idea that baking is definitely harder than cooking. This is because when it comes to measurements of ingredients, baking requires a lot more precision and attention to detail. In that vein, baking is definitely harder. However, there are not-from-scratch options such as Duncan Hines and Pillsbury that allows you to bake cakes with extraordinary ease. And yes, even easier than most dishes that you’d normally cook.

Cooking Has More Leeway

As we mentioned, from a very basic standpoint, cooking is easier than baking. For most dishes that you throw into the oven, even if the recipe looks super complicated, it can be hard to really “mess something up”. You have a bit more freedom to be an artist, if you will, and have some fun with the seasonings—as opposed to baking, where if you mess up the amount of baking soda, your cake is pretty much a goner.

However, the reason we say that it “depends” is strictly because there are very easy instant cakes that you can make, such as the aforementioned Duncan Hines and Pillsbury brands, that taste pretty good. So go with what speaks to you!