Hacker News Books

McGee's On Food and Cooking is a wonderful book, but I'm not sure I'd call it accessible. :)

For beginners I'd instead recommend his book Keys to Good Cooking. It takes all the information in On Food and Cooking and distills it down to the practical lessons a cook will need to improve their cooking.

I disagree with the J. Kenji Lopez-Alt suggestions. He is too extreme/OCD for beginners.

A much more accessible source is Harold McGee who wrote "On Food and Cooking - The Science and Lore of the Kitchen". McGee reviews the science but also some history. He also reviews some of the cooking tips your mom gave you and why they work or don't work.

>If you're making bread for example, some recipes will say don't add the salt with the yeast because it will make it rise slower and some recipes say it won't make a difference - it should be simple to confirm this with an experiment in a day to settle it for good and move on but for whatever reason this doesn't happen.

The book you are looking for in general is called "On Food and Cooking" by Harold McGee. As are many of the recipes from Serious Eats and by extension J. Kenji Lopez-Alt.

Salt does make yeast rise slower, but usually your bulk fermentation has to be done with salt so it doesn't really matter exactly when you add it. The real reason this discussion happens is due to how salt affects the formation of gluten through enzymes in the flour which is why some breads benefit from an autolyse process that purposely omits the salt for an initial fermentation.

There is actually a ton of semi-scientific testing out there regarding bread baking in particular, so if you want to know something there is a good chance of finding an in-depth blog post about it.