Yes. to both.. but if I'm honest, I'd say cooking.. if something goes wrong, you can usually fix it, but not so much with baking..
Case in point, for Christmas, my husband and I tried to make Red Lobster's Cheddar Biscuits from the box mix, but because we were under the gun on time, I put the 2 boxes of mix together and then all of the ingredients, and then mixed them..
Well, the gluten came fast, and after a few minutes my arms felt as if i had been stirring half set concrete, and i passed it to my husband to finish. And I swear that I had every chef I had ever watched on TV in my head saying "always work in batches" over and over after that, and so I had a very strong feeling that it was not going to turn out as good as we hoped. I wish I'd had worked on each batch separately, but at the time we were both under the gun on time, and as soon as I mixed the ingredients, I had to move on to the next dish.
The result?
The biscuits were like scones when they came out of the oven, and after they cooled, they were more like big soft cookies, and in some of them, it was like you were eating baked flour..
We ended up with the result of both undermixed and overmixed dough. But they were still good anyway, so we froze them, and the next time we make a soup we will have them with it.
But I will most definitely be working in separate batches going forward.
And as for cooking, you can usually easily fix anything you messed up.. unless, it is burnt or otherwise FUBAR'd..
If you accidentally used too much salt in a dish, all you have to do is cut up a raw potato, and throw it in the pot, and it will absorb the excess salt, and then when the dish tastes less salty, then you can scoop out the potato.
So even though I like doing both, the process for fixing a mistake is a lot easier with cooking than it is with baking..
