Trouble-Shooting
So far, this exhibit has demonstrated examples of contributing their personal experiences with Cook's Illustrated's content. This artifact, on the other hand, features a 2019 conversation between users who have both experienced problems with the directions for baking a cinnamon bread loaf in a cast iron skillet.
At the top of the screenshot, one frustrated user writes (in all-caps) that she wishes the recipe would tell her what “the internal temp for the bread” is supposed to be so that she doesn’t get “dry bread” from overbaking the loaf. Another person replies, saying he took his loaf out of the oven at 195 degrees and cooled it for two hours, after checking other food blogs and recipe books. He posts a picture of the final results for the first user to show her what shade of brown that the bread should be and emphasizes that it needs to cool before slicing it to see how wet/dry the inside was, but that he will update the thread participants what happened. Several hours later, he responds again, saying 195 degrees was, indeed, the “perfect” temperature after all. Although the original user doesn’t respond, this post received 3 likes, indicating people found his advice helpful.
Compared to the storytelling posts, this form of commenting works as an example of how certain users feel obligated to 1.) Voice concerns about the recipe and to ask for help and 2.) to help those people struggling with the recipe. Now the advice is preserved for users who might stumble on the conversation years later. Indeed, before I became a Cook’s Illustrated.com member, I faced a similar problems with this recipe. At the time, I only had access to the book version of the recipe and had to rely on guesswork to cook the loaf because I was the first one I knew to have tried making it. Although I could have researched temperatures from other websites like one of the commenters did, the ingredients and methods were not the same. Therefore, the comments section was helpful because I could connect with people who had already trouble-shooted the temperature issue with the click of a button.