Baking or Roasting - You Decide
Your recipe for roast loin of pork says to roast in a 350 degree F. oven. Your recipe for yellow butter cake says to bake in a 350 degree F. oven. For either recipe, you open the oven and put your food in. So, is there a difference between baking and roasting?
The short answer is “No.”
But it really isn’t as simple as all that. Baking and roasting are both dry heat cooking methods. This just means that heat is not transferred through a liquid medium during the cooking process. In modern times, we assume that baking and roasting both occur in ovens.
By Definition
Joy of Cooking defines roasting as a specialized type of baking. Roasting is almost always done in an open pan; that is, the food to be roasted is uncovered. Often, when roasting meat, you place it on a rack so it doesn’t sit in its own juices as it roasts. The rack serves as a suspension system whereby the meat is “suspended” in the oven over a pan (shades of spit roasting in days of yore).
There also seems to be a convention associated with the terms “bake” and “roast.” Although the two identify almost identical cooking techniques, in the modern kitchen anyway, “baking” is most generally associated with breads, cakes, pies and casseroles while “roasting” is what you do to meat or vegetables.
Roasting often starts at a higher temperature to create a “crust” on the outside of what is being roasted. Then, the temperature is reduced for the remainder of the cooking time. This is also the case when baking pate a choux (for cream puffs or éclairs) and some breads. In these similar cases, the identical cooking process (high temperature reducing to a lower temperature) is employed for different reasons.
In the roasting example, you’re trying to encourage exterior browning and caramelization of the target food before decreasing the heat and finishing gently. In the baking example, you need an initial burst of intense heat to encourage an expansion of air to make the pate a choux puff up or to encourage optimum oven-spring in the bread (the yeasts’ last hoorah). Then, the temperature is reduced to set and dry the structure of both the pate a choux and the bread.
What’s the Difference?
So, while roasting and baking are almost identical methods of dry heat cooking, the terms roasting and baking apply to two different kinds of foods. You generally roast food that has structure already, solid foods such as meats and vegetables. You generally bake foods that don’t have much structure until they are baked: cakes, breads, pies, casseroles, crème brulee, etc.
In other words, you bake leavened items - items that “puff up” or “rise” during the cooking process. In baking, aside from just “cooking” the food, the goal is to either create steam or expand air pockets within the target food.
Most foods that we roast contain less “empty space” than foods that we bake. These foods are, by and large, already solid. The primary goal of roasting then becomes transferring heat from the surface of the food to the interior at a regulated pace to ensure crusty goodness outside and juicy, tender doneness inside.
Related Topics
How to Bake
How to Roast
How to Bake Bread
How to Pan Roast
Cooking Techniques
on January 10th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Your article has been really helpful for understanding a product process. Thanks a lot
You are very welcome and thanks for visiting. - RG
on February 7th, 2010 at 10:31 am
I am truly happy that i subscribe to this site, it is so informative I am a home cook, I sometimes cook for small gatherings, what I’ve learned makes me feel like an iron chef, the difference between roasting and baking as you have explained I have asked other accomplished cooks and they couldn’t answer, some never thought about it, now they look at me as having a wealth of knowledge and come to me with some of their culinary problems. Thanks
on February 28th, 2010 at 8:22 am
Bless you! Yet yet another nice contribution, which is the reason I returned to all your blogging site time and again..
on May 3rd, 2010 at 6:37 am
Excellent. Very comprehensive and well written. A must. Just found the site and will be exploring it extensively.
on July 2nd, 2010 at 4:59 pm
I am really enjoying your site. Have learned so much (even tho I have been doing extensive baking and cooking for yrs.). Thanks again for the best and informative site on the web. Liz
You are very welcome Liz - RG
on July 28th, 2010 at 3:41 am
Thanks for the information. I was troubled on how to explain baking and roasting to my participants next week until I found your answer… Arigatou, Marivic
Hi Marivic, who are you teaching? RG
on August 18th, 2010 at 10:38 pm
So I wouldn’t bake a potato, I would roast it?
Stephen, I still say baked potatoes if they are whole and roasted potatoes if they are cut up but what’s in a name? - RG
on February 21st, 2011 at 11:56 am
and how come we ‘bake” a ham?
ooohh the joy of cooking!!
Hi Katie, and what about chicken? We’ve all enjoyed both baked and roasted chicken. - RG
on February 25th, 2011 at 11:11 am
In modern ovens there is a significant difference. When an oven has both baking and roasting settings, they are not interchangeable. When in the baking setting, the heat only originates from a bottom element. When set to roasting, the heating elements are both on the top and the bottom.
Hi Peter, interesting point. I think you find both those settings mostly on convection style ovens but I may be wrong. I just checked my brand new oven from LG and it only has baking and broil settings so I’m wondering if I’m missing an important feature. If I cook a chicken at 350 degrees F on the bake setting, I’m still going to call it roast chicken and the technique roasting and not baking. There is a very interesting article at http://www.ochef.com/1403.htm that describes the terminology and talks about various brands and how they define roasting/baking. I think what they say at the end of the article sums it up,
on April 26th, 2011 at 9:05 am
After seeing all kinds of foods described as “roasted”, like roasted garlic, roasted vegetables, just about everything but cake, and maybe ham, I have come to the conclusion that “roasted” is becoming a “drooler “word. I think it sounds more appealing than baked. But sometimes I hear it and I feel that I am being played like Pavlov’s dog. When I see the term roasted garlic, (baked garlic?) I imagine a bunch of cooks holding sticks with garlic on them over a campfire, roasting it, or roasted veggies on a spit over same fire. Oh well, that’s just me.
Interesting take on the term Kay - RG
on July 22nd, 2011 at 2:12 am
after seeing all kinds of different thing this website was the best by far! THANK YOU
on August 12th, 2011 at 9:53 pm
I’m 76 years old. I recently saw a recipe for roasting eggplant cubes and wondered how different that might be from baking them! (One can still be ignorant and naive at 76.) Your rich explanation is superb and wonderful to read. I’ll be eating roasted eggplant cubes tomorrow. Thank you!
You are welcome Alan and keep cooking, it keeps you young. -RG
on September 25th, 2011 at 10:08 am
So, if roasting usually occurs in an open pan, why do some roasting pans come with lids? ( I never know when to cover something or not unless otherwise specifically noted) I didn’t know the difference between roast/bake, when I googled it this is the first article and thank goodness it was! Thank you!
Great question Genevieve and one I need to write an entire post about but to keep it simple, most roasting pans have how low sides and no cover so the hot air can reach more of what you are cooking. The roasting pans that have higher sides and a cover cook the food with steam rather than dry heat roasting. It’s a great way to cook some food and I have friends who swear they are the best for cooking turkey. I imagine you could also use the high sided - covered roasting pan for braising big batches of meat and chicken too. But if you want to roast using the dry heat method, I would stick with a low sided roasting pan with no cover. - RG
on November 23rd, 2011 at 12:47 am
I love the way it was explained. According to what i understood, roasting and baking is the same thing but you have to decide when to use one term or the other. I love it.
on December 29th, 2011 at 4:21 pm
Thank you. Nice well explained article. I figured there was some difference, but obviously not enough that most regular ovens don’t come with a different sering other than bake and broil. I thought maybe a difference in the phan or method of dry/wet