I was lucky enough to get to eat at a fancy hotel recently where they produced some ‘hand-baked’ biscuits.
Just like a hand-sewn suit, these were distinguished by small non-uniformities. Nothing so pronounced as to make me think the cook was actually a four-year old having a break from playdoh, but each was clearly different from its neighbours.
Today’s invention is a way for bakers to simulate the homemade effect. It consists of a baking tray in which the diameters and depths of the cups are all subtly different from each other. Some might even be slightly non-circular.
The effect of this is to create industrial quantities of biscuits which have just enough variation in shape, size and surface browning to be confused with hand-made products.
Any vacuum-formed packaging would have to accommodate numbers of each different biscuit ‘design.’
