Definition

1. Verb:
   • To cook food using dry heat, especially in an oven: The primary meaning refers to the method of preparing food by surrounding it with hot, dry air, typically in an enclosed oven.
   • To become cooked by this method: Used for the food itself undergoing the cooking process.
   • To expose to or be exposed to great heat, especially from the sun: A figurative use meaning to make something very hot or to become very hot, often uncomfortably so.
   • To dry and harden by heat, as in a kiln: To process materials like clay or bricks using intense heat.

Usage and Examples

• Verb (Cooking):

  • She will bake a loaf of bread for dinner.
  • The cookies need to bake for 12 minutes.
  • We baked a ham for the holiday feast.

• Verb (Exposure to Heat):

  • We baked in the sun all afternoon at the beach.
  • The desert sun baked the clay soil until it cracked.

• Verb (Processing Materials):

  • The potter will bake the vase in the kiln to set the glaze.

Advanced Usage

• "to bake in": To incorporate something as an integral or permanent feature during the design or creation process. This is often used in technology and business contexts.

  • Security features are baked into the software from the start.

• "half-baked" (adjective): Not fully thought through; poorly planned or conceived. This idiom derives from the idea of something not fully cooked.

  • He abandoned his half-baked plan to start a business.

Variants and Related Words

• Baker (noun): A person whose trade is baking bread and cakes.
• Bakery (noun): A place where bread and cakes are baked and sold.
• Baked (adjective): Cooked by baking. Also used informally to mean intoxicated by marijuana (slang).
• Baking (noun/gerund): The action of cooking food in an oven. Also used as an adjective to describe extreme heat (e.g., a hot day).

Synonyms

• Roast: To cook, especially meat, in an oven or over a fire. Often implies cooking with fat and for a longer time.
• Toast: To brown food, like bread, by exposure to radiant heat.
• Broil (US) / Grill (UK): To cook by direct exposure to radiant heat (from above or below).

Related Phrasal Verbs

• Bake off: To finish baking; also refers to a baking competition.
  • Let the pie bake off for another five minutes.
  • She won the national bake-off.

Related Idioms

• A bun in the oven (idiom, informal): A humorous way to say someone is pregnant.
  • Did you hear Sarah has a bun in the oven?
• That's the way the cookie crumbles (idiom): That's the unfortunate way things sometimes happen; that's life. (Related to the baked good, a cookie).
  • I didn't get the job, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Verb

1. be very hot, due to hot weather or exposure to the sun
   • The town was broiling in the sun
   • the tourists were baking in the heat
2. heat by a natural force
   • The sun broils the valley in the summer
3. prepare with dry heat in an oven
   • bake a cake
4. cook and make edible by putting in a hot oven
   • bake the potatoes