After I came to the U.S., I learned to use the oven for the first time, for our Thanksgiving turkey (yes, my first Thanksgiving as well).
After that, I experimented making cookies, cakes, meat using the oven. I could get by for the meat -- most of my meat roast turned out fine. Most of my cookies turned out horrible.
Later, I realized the reason why this happened was that I treated baking as cooking. For cooking, I can throw ingredients into a pan, and the result is more or less the same regardless. It's entirely a different story for baking. People measure things up because mix them up. They monitor different states of bubbles when they blend egg white. So, the key to my failure was that I didnt care enough to buy measuring cups or a scale. Well, maybe not patient enough either.
In recent years, I see more and more of my Chinese friends (growing up without an oven) started bakery. My sister also followed this trend. She bought a portable oven and started making stellar cookies. Maybe oven will eventually get into Chinese households? :)
