bake
v.v. to cook food in an oven using dry heat. You use this for making things like bread, cakes, or cookies.
v. to cook food by dry heat without direct exposure to a flame, typically in an oven. Often used intransitively to describe the process of food being cooked in this manner.
I like to bake fresh bread on Sunday mornings.
The recipe says to bake the cake for forty-five minutes at a medium temperature until it is golden brown.
While professional pastry chefs often bake with precise convection ovens, home cooks can achieve similar results by understanding the hot spots and temperature fluctuations of their own equipment.
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”), Swedish baka (“to bake”), Ancient Greek φώγω (phṓgō, “roast”, verb).
The verb can be used transitively ('bake a cake') or intransitively ('the bread is baking').
I am baking a chicken for dinnerI am roasting a chicken for dinnerWhile both use an oven, 'bake' is used for foods with a loose structure that becomes firm (bread, cakes), whereas 'roast' is used for meat and vegetables.