Is cooking and baking the same thing?

Cooking and baking are both methods of preparing food, but they are not the same thing. Cooking is the process of heating food to change its texture, flavor, and edibility, while baking is a specific method of cooking that uses dry heat in an oven.

Cooking can be done in a variety of ways, including boiling, steaming, frying, grilling, and roasting. Each of these methods uses different heat sources and temperatures to achieve different results. For example, boiling is cooking food in water, steaming is cooking food with hot steam, frying is cooking food in oil, grilling is cooking food over an open flame or heat source, and roasting is cooking food in an oven.

Baking is a specific method of cooking that uses dry heat in an oven. The heat in an oven is circulated by convection, which means that it moves around the food and evenly cooks it. This makes baking ideal for cooking foods that need to be evenly cooked throughout, such as cakes, cookies, and bread.

So, while cooking and baking are both methods of preparing food, they are not the same thing. Cooking is a more general term that refers to any method of heating food, while baking is a specific method of cooking that uses dry heat in an oven.