Most of these things aren't done on purpose but happen naturally when working at scale. A few very common examples, in BBQ and sourdough baking (both of which I'm familiar with):
- there's no "overnight dry brine secret". The meat is trimmed, prepped, and seasoned the night before because nobody wants to prep 30, 60, 100 briskets, ribs, butts, or whatevyou at 6am. It just happens to work out as a dry brine because that's the way shifts are planned
- there's no "rest 5 minutes after pulling", whatever time passes between pulling a brisket and wrapping it is the time to check on the other 60 for doneness, pulling a few more, moving them around
- resting briskets in $4k+ Alto-Shaam ovens isn't a "secret": it's a necessity. You need 100 briskets ready for serving at lunch time, I seriously hope no restaurant is playing it by ear and trying to have them ready all at once by 9am to give them couple of hours of rest. It just so happens that by pulling them at 195 and resting them 12 hours you're able to shave half an hour off a shift, and get a delicious non-overcooked product by the time it's on the cutting board
- there's no magic trick to working the fire or weird engineering secret to their offset smokers: they're just huge. The fire, albeit just as large, sits several feet away from the meat. There is literally zero radiant heat. Almost no piece of meat sees the flames directly, the first third of the cooking grate at the exchange is empty. Your brisket gets dry and crispy because it's 40-60" from the fire. If I myself get crispy sitting in front of a firebox to feed splits to it, imagine that poor piece of meat
- there's no secret to "resting the dough 1 hour after mixing" before the first fold: it's the time needed to divide and scale 250lb of dough out of the Hobart into the bins. It's gonna take time. And by the time you're done folding the last bin, the first one is ready to go again
- a sourdough bakery's starter is not "stronger than yours", there's no secret: it just gets stirred a lot. Some bakeries keep their starter in a temperature-controlled vat that runs stirring cycles every 30 minutes. Yeast and LAB can't swim in thick dough just as you couldn't walk through a pool of stones. Stirring the starter takes fresh flour to the feasting bacteria, and it multiplies real fast. Stir your starter every 4 hours and see it quadruple in size instead of the usual doubling
And I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot I've noticed over time as I'm writing this. There's plenty of "the secret to this and that" content on the tube and the internet in general. People really just forget the concept of working at scale when aiming for consistency and repeatability
