Any novice baker can follow a written recipe for chocolate chip cookies, but only a professional baker instinctively knows about how much flour, sugar, eggs or milk they need for fluffy pancakes, chewy cookies or tender crepes. It’s what separates the pro bakers from the fakers. Understanding the base structures of a few pastries, cakes and the like means you can let your creative juices flow when you want to make a batch of cookies on the fly. You can make variations in flavors and add or substitute ingredients, but each ratio represents the basic components needed to create the most elemental version of that food. Here are the 11 ratios that professional chefs in Food Network Kitchen return to again and again.