That is something that often bothers me with many recipes. Often I’m confused why they are using a certain weird ingredient I don’t have access to or when they have a step that I don’t understand its purpose of and the recipe doesn’t explain its reasoning or its reasoning doesn’t make any sense. I then have to improvise without any idea if the changes I’m making will significantly impact the final result.
Only very few online recipes I see explain why they are written the way they are.
You may want to check out Baker Bettie’s Better Baking Book. It’s a book of base recipes. A base recipe is a very simple recipe which can be modified and added to relatively easily. Base recipes are popular with professional kitchens, because it gets the proportions where they need to be for the baking chemistry to work right. Then you can just add your own fluff on top of it.
What makes the Better Baking Book unique is that it’s written for beginners instead of professional kitchens, so it actually explains why you’re using certain ingredients, how you may be able to substitute those ingredients, and how differing from the recipe will affect the outcome.
