Clafoutis, the rusticfb899, eggy beauty from France, most certainly stands alone. It’s easy to whip together, delicious whether rewarmed or freshly baked and still gooey or left over for a few days and eaten as cold, firm petits fours with your hot morning coffee. It comforts while exuding an unpretentious elegance. Yet it is not original in technique or ingredients, one of many dishes sharing lineage in the Family of the Delicious.

American-style pancakes, crepes, Dutch babies, Yorkshire puddings and clafoutis all share the same ingredients. So what makes them so different from one another? The ratio of eggs to flour to fat. And that — that flexibility, the wide range of how a few core components are used — is to me the beauty of baking.

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Why is this thrilling? Well, because it’s a lesson in what ratios can do for texture and body, and, more interesting (and exciting), an education in how you can make decisions based on this understanding.

One of the biggest clichés (and untruths) about baking is how rigid it all is. In all my years teaching pastry and baking, the thing I have found myself saying time and time again is this: Experience and practice have far more to do with baking excellence than any kind of exactitude.

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