bake

The act of cooking food by baking.

Noun

  1. The act of cooking food by baking.
    • Taking one of her cakes or a tray of biscuits from the oven always gives her satisfaction and a moment of pride; that is, of course, unless there happens to be some little element that doesn't please her with the bake....
  2. Any of various baked dishes resembling casserole.
    • A fish bake made with cod chunks, sliced parboiled potatoes, […] - 2009, Dictionary of Food: International Food and Cooking Terms from A to Z, →ISBN:
    • If you happen to have small, heat-proof glass or ceramic pots in your kitchen (known as ramekins) then you can make this very easy pasta bake in fun-size, individual portions. - 2009, Rosalind Peters, Kate Pankhurst,...
  3. Any food item that is baked, such as a pastry.
    • bake pan
    • Baking parchment should not be confused with greaseproof paper — the former has a non-stick coating and will ensure that your bakes lift out of the tin or off the baking sheets easily, the latter will have the opposite...
    • Traditionally made with flour, salt, yeast and a large amount of fat or lard, it is claimed that the beloved bake has fallen out of favour with younger people. - 2024 May 24, The Press and Journal, Inverness, page 28,...
  4. A social event at which food (such as seafood) is baked, or at which baked food is served.
    • The central episode is the temporary burial of the novitiate; a shallow pit is excavated, and in this a fire is made, as for a fish bake; […] - 1904, Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology:
    • I am about to launch a scheme for our local to invest a few dollars in a spot where the boys will know where to find company and pass a few hours or a week-end out in the fresh air and partake of shrimp bakes or fish...
    • […] also featured a fish bake, a dance, and a beach party[.] - 2006, Jeffery P. Sandman, Peter R. Sandman, Soaring and Gliding: The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Area:
  5. A small, flat (or ball-shaped) cake of dough eaten mainly in Barbados, similar in appearance and ingredients to a pancake but fried (or sometimes roasted).
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:bake.

Origin

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₃g- Proto-Indo-European *bʰh₃g- Proto-Germanic *bakaną Proto-West Germanic *bakan Old English bacan Middle English baken English bake From Middle English baken, from Old English bacan (“to bake”), from Proto-West Germanic *bakan, from Proto-Germanic *bakaną (“to bake”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₃g- (“to roast, bake”). Cognate with West Frisian bakke (“to bake”), Dutch bakken (“to bake”), Low German backen (“to bake”), German backen (“to bake”), Norwegian Bokmål bake (“to bake”), Danish bage (“to bake”), Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish baka (“to bake”), Ancient Greek φώγω (phṓgō, “roast”, verb).

Forms

bakes

Related

bake-danuki

Derived

bake shop fake-bake

Verb

  1. To cook using an oven, especially baked goods.
    • I baked a delicious cherry pie.
    • She's been baking all day to prepare for the dinner.
    • He baked her a cake.

    1. (transitive or intransitive or ditransitive, with person as subject) To cook (something) in an oven (for someone).

    2. (intransitive, with baked thing as subject) To be cooked in an oven.

      • The cake baked at 350°F.

    3. (intransitive) To regularly prepare baked goods.

      • In some cultures, it is expected that a proper housewife should bake.

    4. (figurative, with "in" or "into") To incorporate into something greater.

      • Disagreements between pilots' unions are baked into the merger cake. - 2014, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and...
      • Many of the causes of governmental dysfunction are simply baked into the cake of American politics and will never change. - 2016, David B. Woolner, John M. Thompson, Progressivism in America: Past, Present and Future,...
  2. To heat or dry.
    • The clay baked in the sun.

    Synonyms: fire

    1. (intransitive) To be warmed to drying and hardening.

    2. (transitive) To dry by heat.

      • They baked the electrical parts lightly to remove moisture.

    3. (intransitive, figuratively) To be hot.

      • It is baking in the greenhouse.
      • I'm baking after that workout in the gym.

    4. (transitive, figuratively) To cause to be hot.

      • My dad told me about his days in the Navy: He'd agreed to be a guinea pig in exchange for a shorter enlistment. […] They baked him in the sun. - 2008 October, Davy Rothbart, “How I caught up with dad”, in Men's Health,...
  3. To harden by cold.
    • The earth […] is baked with frost. - 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • They bake their sides vppon the cold, hard stone. - 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 9:

    1. (intransitive, slang) To smoke marijuana.

      • (Let's bake tonight.)
  4. To fix (lighting, reflections, etc.) as part of the texture of an object to improve rendering performance.

Forms

bakes baking baked book baken

Related

roast

Derived

bakable bakeability bakeable bakeaholic bakeboard bake bread bakecraft baked bakehead bakehouse bake in bakemeat bake off bake-off bakeoff bake out bakeoven bake oven bakery bake sale bakeshop bake someone's bread bakestone bake up