Recipe Testing Methodology.

The standard

Every recipe has to pass one question before it is published: would I make this again next Monday? Not "is it impressive", not "does it photograph well". Would it survive an ordinary morning, in an ordinary kitchen, with ordinary patience.

If the answer is no, it does not go up, however good the photo is.

Where we test

In a home kitchen, on domestic equipment, on real mornings. Not in a professional test kitchen with a blast chiller and a brigade. That is deliberate: a recipe timed on restaurant equipment is not a recipe you can trust at 7am on a Tuesday.

Unless a recipe says otherwise, we assume you have:

• A conventional domestic oven, and we give temperatures for conventional heat. For fan-assisted ovens, reduce by about 20°C or 25°F
• A standard four-ring hob, gas or electric
• A non-stick frying pan, a saucepan, a baking tray, a mixing bowl
• Scales, measuring spoons and a timer

Where a recipe genuinely needs something else, a blender, a griddle, a specific pan size, it is listed in the ingredients rather than assumed.

What the times mean

Every recipe shows a total time, split into preparation and cooking. These are measured while actually making the dish, not estimated afterwards.

• Prep time is hands-on work: chopping, weighing, whisking, assembling
• Cook time is the dish on the heat or in the oven
• Total time is the two added together, and it always adds up. If a page says 10 minutes, prep plus cook equals 10

Times assume you are working at a normal domestic pace, not racing. Resting, proving, chilling and soaking are called out in the method so a recipe never surprises you with an overnight step you did not budget for.

Servings and scaling

Servings are given as the number of people the dish comfortably feeds as breakfast, which is a smaller portion than the same dish would be at dinner. Recipes on the site can be scaled with our recipe scaler, which adjusts the quantities but not the times. Scaling up a pan dish usually means cooking in batches rather than doubling the heat.

Difficulty

These are about technique and attention, not effort or expense.

• Easy — no technique you need to have learned. If you can follow the steps in order, it works
• Medium — one step that rewards practice, such as folding an omelet or poaching an egg, and may not be perfect the first time
• Hard — timing, temperature or handling all matter at once, such as enriched doughs and laminated pastry

Ingredients and substitutions

Quantities are given in the units we cooked with, and eggs are large unless stated. We write ingredients as they are sold, so you are not converting in the supermarket.

Substitutions are only suggested where we have tried them. If we have not cooked the dairy-free or gluten-free version ourselves, we do not claim it works, because a substitution that changes the structure of a batter is not a swap, it is a different recipe.

Cultural recipes

Braffess publishes breakfasts from more than thirty countries. Where a dish belongs to a food culture that is not our own, we cook it as it is made there before considering any adaptation, we name it as it is named there, and we say clearly when we have changed something for ingredient availability. An adapted version is labelled as adapted, not presented as the original.

Reader ratings

Ratings on recipe pages come from readers who cooked the dish. They are not seeded, edited or filtered for being unflattering. A recipe with a low rating and useful feedback gets retested rather than hidden.

Retesting and retiring

We go back to a recipe when:

• Readers report the timing or quantities not working on their equipment
• A key ingredient becomes hard to buy, or is reformulated
• We find a genuinely better method

A revised recipe gets a new review date. A recipe we can no longer stand behind is corrected or removed, not left up quietly.

What we do not do

Said plainly, so you know the limits of what you are reading:

• We are not a laboratory. Nutrition figures, where shown, are calculated estimates for the stated serving, not measured by assay
• We do not run blind panel tastings or consumer testing
• We cannot test on every oven, hob and altitude in existence. Your equipment will vary, which is why we describe what the food should look and smell like, not only how long to wait
• We do not publish a recipe we have not cooked

Tell us when it does not work

If a recipe failed for you, that is useful and we want to hear it. Email hello@braffess.com or use the contact page with the recipe, what you did and what happened. It is how recipes get better. See also our editorial policy.