baking

Pluralbakings (some meanings)

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of bake.

   He spent the afternoon baking a cake for the party.

   Baking is something she looks forward to every weekend.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. In "she is baking bread" it is a verb, and in "baking relaxes her" it is a noun naming the activity. Because bake can mean both cooking something and being cooked, the same form runs in two directions: "he is baking a pie" and "the pie is baking" are both correct, and "baking her a cake" adds the person it is made for.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   An act of cooking food by means of dry oven heat.

   The baking of the casserole took most of the morning.

   A slow baking allows the flavors to develop and the crust to set.

   Note

   Usually a mass noun, like the names of other household work: you do some baking, the way you do some washing. It can still be counted when separate sessions are meant. Harriet Jacobs, in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), writes of a woman who "began her midnight bakings" after a full day's work for her mistress.

3. 3
   adjectivefiguratively

   Extremely hot: said of a person, an object, or the weather.

   We trudged across the baking sand toward the only patch of shade.

   By noon the warehouse was baking, and the workers took frequent breaks.

   Similarscorching, sweltering, boiling, roasting, blistering

   Oppositefreezing, cold

   Note

   Heat borrowed from the oven: the figurative "to be hot" use of bake, turned into a description. It works of people ("I'm baking—could you open the window?") as readily as of a car left in the sun. It sits beside boiling, broiling and roasting, all kitchen words pressed into service for heat. Because it already means "very hot," it is not graded with more or most.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A batch of bread, cakes, or similar products made in a single round of cooking.

   Each morning's baking yielded about three dozen loaves.

   The shop's weekly baking was famous throughout the village.

   Similarbatch

   Note

   Unlike the activity of baking, this one is counted. A baking is what comes out of the oven in one round, so a shop can speak of the morning's baking or of two bakings a day. The word names the batch as a single event, and the plural follows from that.

5. 5
   adjective

   That cooks food by dry heat, as an oven or similar appliance does.

   The baking element at the bottom of the oven glowed red.

   Commercial baking equipment maintains a steady temperature for hours.

6. 6
   noununcountable

   The particular manner or method used to bake something.

   The slow baking on these rolls gives them a thick, chewy crust.

   Bakers judge the quality of the baking by the color of the crust.

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