• Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    It’s a language-specific distinction, mostly referring to the temperature and secondarily to what you’re cooking (dough vs. others). Other languages deal with it differently. For example:

    • Italian merges “bake” and “cook” into “cuocere” (ho cotto il pane = I’ve baked the bread), but keeps “roast” distinct as “arrostire” (ho arrostito la carne = I roasted the meat).
    • Portuguese doesn’t bother with the distinction. Roast, bake, both are “assar” (assei o pão = I’ve baked the bread; assei a carne = I’ve roasted the meat).

    You could also say something like “ho arrostito il pane” (lit. “I roasted the bread”) in Italian but the meaning is different - you’re toasting the bread, not baking it.

    In general you’ll use a higher temperature when roasting than when baking, but there are a few exceptions - like, pizze are baked, but a pizza baked on low temperature is a sad pizza. For stuff like beef ribs (that are cooked on low temperature) I’ve seen people using both “baking” and “roasting”.

    • droans@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      But like

      Why does my oven have both a bake mode and a roast mode for both regular and convection if I still have to set the temperature on both?

      • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Check the oven manual to be sure, but odds are that the roasting mode heats the food from the top, to increase browning. While the baking mode heats it from the bottom.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      To add to this, roasting also tends to involve more liquids- like a beef roast is done in its juices, maybe some sort of stock, where baked goods are mostly “dry”

      • bhmnscmm@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        That’s really just meats: braising essentially. Roasted vegetables aren’t cooked in juices, for example.

        • dbilitated@aussie.zone
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          1 year ago

          veggies are more likely to have a higher percentage of water in their composition, though? not disagreeing, just a thought

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          … vegetables aren’t cooked in stock…?

          huh. I never knew that. Guess I’ve been doing it wrong all these years.
          The most obvious example of this is a pot roast. personally, I go with the roast, carrots, roasting potatoes, a fine-chopped onion and some fine-chopped fennel bulb. red wine, stock that matches the protein (beef with beef, chicken with chicken, pork with pork.) wine of your choice, and some butter. When everything is done, deglaze the pot, strain the remaining stock and thicken it with either a cornstartch slurry or blond to brown roux for gravy.

          you can also do the vegetables separately from the meat, using the stock to enhance and deepen the flavors- for example, a vegetable stock with some wine, garlic, butter and olive oil with both keep the vegetables from drying out under higher heat while accelerating the maillard reaction so they can get that perfect bit of browning on top without overcooking, while the wine adds a bit of lightness to the heavy-savory flavors.

          • bhmnscmm@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            What is generally considered roasted vegetables aren’t cooked in liquid. There’s nothing wrong with cooking vegetables in liquid, but most people wouldn’t call them roasted. Even if the vegetables are in a pot roast.

    • Case@unilem.org
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      1 year ago

      It also seems to have some context with whether or not it is in an edible state. You bake dough > Turns to bread (food product on its own) > you roast (toast) bread - all based on your understanding.

      I would love to be a polyglot, sadly, the only thing besides english I “speak” are scripting languages - and that was hard fought knowledge.

      • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Or perhaps if there’s some underlying transformation? Because technically dough is as edible as raw meat - you can eat both, you’d probably survive, but it’s better to eat it cooked. Dunno, sometimes the “boundaries” between words are rather fuzzy.

        I would love to be a polyglot, sadly, the only thing besides english I “speak” are scripting languages - and that was hard fought knowledge.

        To learn a language is easier but more laborious than people take it for. There’s a lot of dumb memorisation, specially when it comes to the vocabulary. Because of that I guess that the best tip that I can give you, in this regard, is to find a purpose for your prospective language, something that makes you say “I need to learn [language] because [reason]”. The reason can be as silly as you want for the others, but it needs to be serious for you.