A team of scientists from the University of California proposed a novel approach for simulating tasty projects.
The paper "A Thermomechanical Material Point Method for Baking and Cooking" discusses a Material Point Method that can help baking bread, cookies, pancakes and similar materials made of water, flour, eggs, fat, sugar and leavening agents in 3D.
The team developed a novel approach based on mixture theory that saves time when working on interactions between individual water, gas and dough species.
"Heat transfer with thermal expansion is used to model thermal variations in material properties. Water-based mass transfer is resolved through the porous mixture, gas represents carbon dioxide produced by leavening agents in the baking process and dough is modeled as a viscoelastoplastic solid to represent its varied and complex rheological properties," states the abstract. "Water content in the mixture reduces during the baking process according to Fick's Law which contributes to drying and cracking of crust at the material boundary."
The goal was to consider all the basic principles used in cooking when setting up 3D simulations. The team managed to build a complex model that manages to achieve realisitc results.
You can find the full paper here.