9781416566113

WHEN YOU KNOW A CULINARY RATIO, IT'S NOT LIKE KNOWING A SINGLE RECIPE, IT'S INSTANTLY KNOWING A THOUSAND. Why spend time sorting through the millions of cookie recipes available in books, magazines, and on the Internet? Isn't it easier just to remember 1-2-3? That's the ratio of ingredients that always make a basic, delicious cookie dough: 1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, and 3 parts flour. From there, add anything you want -- chocolate, lemon and orange zest, nuts, poppy seeds, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, almond extract, or peanut butter, to name a few favorite additions. Replace white sugar with brown for a darker, chewier cookie. Add baking powder and/or eggs for a lighter, airier texture. RATIOS ARE THE STARTING POINT FROM WHICH A THOUSAND VARIATIONS BEGIN. Ratios are the simple proportions of one ingredient to another. Biscuit dough is 3 : 1 : 2 -- or 3 parts flour, 1 part fat, and 2 parts liquid. This ratio is the beginning of many variations, and because the biscuit takes sweet and savory flavors with equal grace, you can top it with whipped cream and strawberries or sausage gravy. Vinaigrette is 3 : 1, or 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, and is one of the most useful sauces imaginable, giving everything from grilled meats and fish to steamed vegetables or lettuces intense flavor. Cooking with ratios will unchain you from recipes and set you free. With thirty-three ratios and suggestions for enticing variations, Ratio is the truth ofcooking: basic preparations that teach us how the fundamental ingredients of the kitchen -- water, flour, butter and oils, milk and cream, and eggs -- work. Change the ratio and bread dough becomes pasta dough, cakes become muffins become popovers become crepes. As the culinary world fills up with overly complicated recipes and never-ending ingredient lists, Michael Ruhlman blasts through the surplus of information and delivers this innovative, straightforward book that cuts to the core of cooking. Ratio provides one of the greatest kitchen lessons there is -- and it makes the cooking easier and more satisfying than ever.

Michael Ruhlman is the author of twelve books, including the bestselling The Making of a Chef and The French Laundry Cookbook. He lives in Cleveland with his wife, daughter, and son and is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and Gourmet as well as his highly popular blog at Ruhlman.com.

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What Is a Ratio
and Why Is It Important?

Aculinary ratio is a fixed proportion of one ingredient or ingredients relative to another. These proportions form the backbone of the craft of cooking. When you know a culinary ratio, it's not like knowing a single recipe, it's instantly knowing a thousand. Here is the ratio for bread: 5 parts flour : 3 parts water.

This means that if you combine 5 ounces of flour and 3 ounces of water, or 20 ounces of flour and 12 ounces of water, or 500 grams of flour and 300 grams of water, you will, if you mix it properly, have a good bread dough. You need a small amount of yeast, but the exact amount is hugely variable as it turns out, so that's not a meaningful part of the ratio. You need salt for flavor, but that is a matter of taste to a large degree. And you need to mix the dough until it has enough elasticity to contain the gas released by the yeast. So while there are rules to follow and issues of technique, these are not part of the ratio.

What can you do, now that you know the bread ratio? You can make fresh bread without opening a single book or scouring a website for random recipes, and you can make as much or as little as you like. That 500 grams of flour or 20 ounces of flour with the water, a big pinch of dry yeast, and 2 big pinches of salt make a good loaf of bread. But if you want to liven it up, add a tablespoon of freshly chopped rosemary and a head of roasted garlic and stretch it out for a roasted garlic and rosemary ciabatta. Other fresh herbs such as thyme, sage, and oregano work beautifully, too. Or use other intense, flavorful ingredients: poblano and chipotle peppers, kalamata olives and walnuts, chocolate and cherries, pistachios and cranberries. Caramelized onion! A sausage! Cheese! The variations are limitless because you know the ratio, 5 parts flour, 3 parts water. Eventually you'll feel comfortable using some whole grain flour in there or potato.

Of course, many, many variables contribute to the end result -- how long the final rise is, how hot the oven, how well you shaped the dough, and so on -- and addressing those variables can make baking feel dauntingly complicated. Indeed, baking that perfect loaf of bread every time takes practice and thoughtfulness; whole books are devoted to it. But on the most basic level, baking bread is not complicated.

Feel like making fresh pizza? Ten ounces of flour, 6 ounces of water, a pinch of yeast, and a pinch of salt will give you dough for a medium pie. Many recipes for pizza dough include a sugar of some kind -- if that's to your taste, add a tablespoon of sugar or honey (you'll find this increases yeast activity). Many add a flavoring of olive oil. Go for it. Stick to the 5 : 3 ratio and you're golden.

Want an easy delicious white sandwich bread for the kids? Same ratio (and maybe add some wheat germ for additional fiber and some honey for flavor and sweetness). But still it's 5 to 3. Just cook it more gently, 350°F for an hour or so, until it's very hot inside.

This book is composed of such ratios.

Cooking is infinitely nuanced and there are ultimately too many variables to account for in any single recipe (the ambient humidity, how long a bag of flour has been sitting in the cupboard), so it's important to remember, as my first culinary instructor notes, "how well ratios work is directly proportionate to the ratio of common sense applied to them." Good technique must be used in conjunction with the ratio -- which is why this is a book and not a sheet of paper. You need the ratio and the user's manual. Technique must be practiced -- you can never stop getting better.

This is important: my aim isn't to make the perfect bread or pasta or mayonnaise or biscuits -- "the best I've ever had." It's to set a baseline to work from, to codify the fundamentals from which we work and which we work off of. When I was writing Walk on Water, about a renowned surgeon, more than one doctor noted the common saying, "great is the enemy of good," meaning that when surgeons strive for greatness, they can cause harm when they might otherwise not have harmed had they simply strived for good. I've worked with the greatest perfectionist there is in the cooking world, and I love that hunt for the perfect sauce, the perfect custard, but here I'm after good. Only when we know good can we begin to inch up from good to excellent.

Here is another thing knowing a ratio does: it helps you to better understand cooking in general. How does bread differ from fresh pasta? Not all that much actually, except that for pasta, egg takes the place of water at a ratio of 3 parts flour and 2 parts egg. What's the difference between bread dough and pie dough? The proportions of flour and water are a little different (3 : 1), but it's the important third ingredient, fat, that makes it pie dough -- fat is responsible for making pie dough unlike bread dough, tender rather than chewy. The pie dough ratio is fairly standard: 3 : 2 : 1 (3 parts flour, 2 parts fat, and 1 part water) and it's often referred to as 3-2-1 Pie Dough. It's a great ratio because it's so versatile. It's also possible to make a really bad pie dough using this ratio if you don't know the properties of pie dough and the fact that the gentler you are with it, the more tender it will be. But the ratio itself is bedrock.

The fact is, there are hundreds of thousands of recipes out there, but few of them help you to be a better cook in any substantial way. In fact, they may hurt you as a cook by keeping you chained to recipes. Getting your hands on a ratio is like being given a key to unlock those chains. Ratios free you.