As you could see by my message Mr. Pop I agree completely with you
regarding some overly complex recipes.
There is one comment I would like to make however regarding your
statement "I will combine eggs, oil, and water to form an emulsion
before adding to dry".
This technique worked well for me when preparing cake batters and the
like, however I was surprised to find it didn't work nearly as well
when preparing bread dough.
Some years ago when I was a younger man and spent hours
experimenting, I was working on a Panettone recipe and found to my
great surprise that my dough had a better rise when I added the eggs,
oil and water separately. I repeated this test several times, enough
times to grasp that what happened was no fluke. I really can't
explain it, I went with what worked and left it at that. You might
care to try this yourself, tossing in the whole egg(s), oil and water
separately and see what your results are. It held for me with
different doughs but then again, it might not hold true for all. I
also should point out that all these tests were run with an ABM doing
the kneading, baking was done in the oven. So there you have it, I am
curious to know if anyone else has noticed this difference and if you
in fact get the same results.
bar.