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Oatmeal Cookies, Unabaker Style

The story (some say "tale") of how Unabaker invented the oatmeal cookie is an interesting one, but his old pal Padraic McDoo should be the man to tell it. Modesty prevents the Unabaker from acknowledging all his kitchen and bake shop triumphs, whereas McDoo is a born story teller. Look for that in an upcoming post.

Meanwhile, in typical methodical Unabaker fashion, he devised a useful tool, The Unabaker Formula Calculator (see below), for composing, analyzing, editing and recording bake shop formulae. The device has several commercial applications. It can enhance operational efficiency, catalogue a shop's recipes and formulae into an essential "kitchen guide", provide an easy to follow formula writing/editing format that's ideal for use in new product bake testing (essential "what if" starting points of the creative process), and can precisely rescale formula yield to meet changing production requirements. It's equally valuable for fine tuning formulae according to desired cost considerations.

Most of us are not artisan baker's or commercial operators, but the device provides similar benefits for home bakers. When tweaking a formula for cost considerations, or for rescaling its yield, as a way to incorporate recipes from other sources (how most home bakers find inspiration), and to facilitate an organized record keeping of one's own creations, it's a handy resource. The Unabaker Formula Calculator will be an often referenced resource in his instructional methodology, using it to introduce concepts essential to understanding baking.

The tool in it's current form is a spreadsheet, but it's design allows it to be used for all types of breads no matter how complex, as well as most of the broader range of bake shop and pastry shop product. He hopes that all who aspire to be better bakers, and to save the world along the way, will find it a useful accessory to the process.

This article presents a simplified version of the master calculator as a soft introduction to the device, using the oatmeal cookie formula to illustrate it's basic design and functions. Future articles will provide greater familiarity, unveiling further aspects of it's functionality, and increasingly more interesting and detailed formulae with a tighter, though not exclusive, focus on bread crafting. If having looked over the calculator, questions arise, feel free to contact him; the Unabaker is always in. He'll happily explain, in as much detail as required, the ins and outs of it, and the multiple benefits of using the tool.

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Instead of simply writing an oatmeal cookie formula, the Unabaker has taken this opportunity to introduce his formula calculator as the means for presenting The oatmeal cookie, the original, the one and only World Peace and Happiness Oatmeal Cookie. The history of his invention of the oatmeal cookie is widely known, but the story behind the birth of his calculator is not.

The first and most basic version appeared in the winter of 2005. Holed up in his mountain hideout, he was biding time and treading water so to speak during one of his less glamorous career interludes. Finding himself with more time on his hands than he was accustomed to, he decided to start making bread again. He spent his days and his nights studying and practicing, and doing bake tests of new ideas and old favorites. Soon he was making more stuff than he could consume, so he started dispensing the results to unsuspecting recipients, anonymously delivering boules and baguettes, croissants and crostata; signing his packages The Unabaker, sometimes with silly provocations to open immediately. The idea of creating the basic calculator was to make it part of a concise bread crafting tutorial for his son as a holiday gift. He hoped that it would ignite a desire to learn about bread, something they could share together. Since then, numerous iterations of the original have come and gone. The device steadily grew in scope with a useful application to the wider range of bake shop production and more complex breads.

The original World Peace And Happiness Oatmeal Cookie has undergone a similar evolution. As is Unabaker's habit in the kitchen, he tinkers and adjusts; fine tuning taste and texture. Every time he makes it, his intent is to do so better than before. The original formula, fine as it was, has been revised in incremental fashion. Numerous updates and subsequent bake tests; all were noteworthy. Such tweaks, while some mightn't have been gastronomically necessary for goodness, nevertheless reflect his own "arc of learning" which he'd be regretful not to share, and which all who desire to be better bakers could do much worse than to emulate.

Be that as it may, and since that arc of learning has been painstakingly sorted through for the reader's convenience, just skip to the formula itself. Save yourself his eons of onerous kitchen toil, the rigors of profound gastronomical meditations, the tediousness of writing journal articles, and the pathos of peer review, so oftentimes contentious and envy ridden. The Theory of Goodness, The Unabaker Manifesto, his every thought and movement in the bake shop solely focused upon abetting world happiness, resolving conflicts between Sapiens, its planet, the myths they've conjured to sustain themselves, and of course, alleviating personal suffering and finding enlightenment. A step by step process it has been, but it's all fully revealed in The Unabaker Speaks.

Unabaker advises you to open this link immediately. World well-being starts here.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gYvfr0WD1tqhSGtVxGJlTIPVJqIZoOqp7udeRcBtJXc/edit?usp=sharing

[Please let me know if you have a problem opening, and using this worksheet. I can usually figure a solution.]


Editors Notes: The Unabaker is a modest fellow; the flourishes of bravado meant purely for entertainment value. The bit about "the world peace and happiness cookie", however, was McDoo's idea, which Baker really liked, but thought better he retitle it to be more truth-in-menu appropriate. Of course, all trademarks still apply.

The Unabaker Speaks has no interest in profit mongering. There are no ads, there is no fee, but The Unabaker Formula Calculator has been copy written, so a bit of deference and care must be given to the hard work involved in it's creation. If you want to use it in your commercial operation, or post it elsewhere, please contact him first.

If you prefer the calculator in a different spreadsheet program format, this can be done. Contact Unabaker with special requests.

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