Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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pie crust laser

not sure how to do this ...
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I would like a laser that projects a grid onto a counter top or cutting board. This would give you exact measurements when you roll out crust. It would also help when prepping food with a knife.

It would be adjustable from metric to English. It would also have a "tare" setting so that it would be calibrated to the height of the cutting board or coutertop.

Lasers with spinning mirrors are already used to project circles; this would be helpful in rolling out pie crust to a specific diameter.

What is a 1/4 inch dice? A 3/4 inch cube? 1/2 in strips? Just set it and cut. Is this an 8x10 inch pan? punch in the dimensions.

Set it to "julienne," "dice," or "chop" per Julia Child. Someone has already programmed the sizes she's talking about.

The unit comes with a cool iPhone-type interface screen that will also store recipes and make other unit conversions.

Yes, it would be cool if the lasers did the cutting. Otherwise, you could just use a ruler.

nomocrow, May 12 2008

Halfbakery: Perfectly Sized Slices Perfectly_20Sized_20Slices
Related, sort of. [jutta, May 12 2008]

Just like this https://m.aliexpres...dapt=gloPc2usaMsite
[21 Quest, Jun 06 2023]


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Annotation:







       "exact measurements" - cooking, in my experience, is all about *inexact* measurements.   

       Exact measurements are what those things that come in cardboard sleeves at MacDonalds are all about.
DrCurry, May 12 2008
  

       //Yes, it would be cool if the lasers did the cutting.//   

       [+] 2 problems I see: First, wouldn't a laser just bake the bread, or leave burned charcoal edges?   

       Second, I imagine the following conversation:   

       Person 1: Nice tattoo! Does the grid mean anything, or does it just look cool?   

       Person 2 (embarassed): Actually, it's not a tattoo. I had a mishap with a home pastry cutting laser.   

       Person 1: ...
sninctown, May 12 2008
  

       //Exact measurements are what those things that come in cardboard sleeves at MacDonalds are all about.//   

       McDonald's doesn't suck because it uses exact measurements. It sucks because it uses bad ingredients.   

       Cooking is not about inexact measurements. It is about combining ingredients to create levels of flavors and textures. It may not be exactly according to a recipe, but I like to know exactly what what is going in and why.   

       There are happy mistakes, but most cooking mistakes are unhappy. Try substituting baking powder for baking soda in Alice Water's blueberry pancake recipe, as I once accidentally did. Big, nasty waste.   

       Or, for the purposes of this idea, cut the chicken for Victor Sodsook's ginger chicken too thin or thick. It will either be dry and unpleasant or raw and dangerous. If you cook it through, the vegetables will be soggy. But you can certainly substitute tofu without any problem, and you can cut it in whatever size you want.   

       My point is that it depends on the circumstance, but sometimes exact measurements are needed to produce a desired result.
nomocrow, May 12 2008
  

       //McDonald's doesn't suck because it uses exact measurements. It sucks because it uses bad ingredients//
And combines and serves them in a sucking manner.
AbsintheWithoutLeave, May 12 2008
  

       [-] Waste of technology for OCD (WOTFOCD?).   

       Isn’t this just part of a list of possible but unnecessary uses for a new technology? How about a CNC machine that cuts toe nails? Or a laser guided water hose?   

       Sorry to single you out [nomocrow] but it seems there have been a rash of these lately. Actually, constantly.
bneal27, May 12 2008
  

       If you're tryhing to crack down on needlessly expended energy on the halfbakery, you've got quite a lot of work ahead of you...   

       The reason one might want to carefully control the size of e.g. vegetable slices is so that everything cooks evenly, and you're not serving up a stew of undercooked and mushy.   

       Sounds obvious now; but I didn't understand this for most of my life.   

       So, you can take that to extremes, of course, but there's a basic good reason for wanting actual half-inch slices if that's what a recipe's cooking time is intended for. And projecting an actual grid onto the cooking surface is a good way of indicating what that would look like. How much you worry about a cut that's slightly off is still up to you.
jutta, May 12 2008
  

       //[-] Waste of technology for OCD (WOTFOCD?)//   

       =/   

       1) This idea could be implemented with Stone Age technology, albeit with greater effort: Get a mud hut. Cover all openings so no light can enter. Cut an opening in the roof, and cover the opening with a thin piece of tree bark, with a grid pattern of holes drilled into it. Cook by the light of a single candle. Complete each cutting step rapidly to avoid shifting light as the sun moves.   

       2) Awesome But Unnecessary techNology (ABUN)
sninctown, May 12 2008
  

       // not sure how to do this ... //   

       marked-for-tagline
whatrock, May 25 2023
  

       This is actually far more bakeable than I think many realize. Have you ever seen a laser projection keyboard? Little thing about the size of a Zippo, you stand it up and it projects a laser outline of a keyboard onto the surface in front of it. You type within the field, and it uses a sensor to track the movement of your fingers and record your keystrokes. Beautiful design, terrible execution. They don't work for shit, BUT since you don't actually need the finger tracking functionality in a cooking application like this, this could work very well.
21 Quest, Jun 06 2023
  


 

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