Beaverton, Oregon — Franklin Doss does not follow recipes. This is something he will tell you unprompted, and something he told the three dinner guests present Saturday when he produced a structurally precise, historically accurate Black Forest cake that differed from the source document by a single maraschino cherry.

"I use recipes more as a jumping-off point," said Doss, who had by that point jumped off the point and landed with both feet on step seven of a nine-step process. "Cooking is really about intuition."

The recipe, a printed page from The Complete German Baking Bible folded open and propped against the backsplash at a reading angle, was consulted forty-one times over the course of three hours, according to witnesses. Doss's wife, Linda, confirmed that he briefly left the kitchen to retrieve his reading glasses before measuring the kirsch.

"He measured four and a half cups of cake flour, which is what the recipe said. Then he looked up and told me he just 'had a feeling' about four and a half cups."

The cake required three separate sets of measurements, a temperature calibration, and a seven-minute rest period specified on line four of the recipe. Doss timed the rest period on his phone, then announced to no one in particular that he "always lets it rest about seven minutes or so."

Dr. Pamela Strutt, Associate Professor of Performative Culinary Identity at the Midwestern Institute for Kitchen Self-Concept Studies, says Doss represents a well-documented archetype.

"The recipe-denial personality is not about the food," Strutt explained. "It is about constructing a social identity as a person who is relaxed, talented, and fundamentally too creative to be governed by instructions. The food is incidental. The audience is everything."

Strutt noted that in clinical observations, subjects in active recipe denial have been recorded re-reading the same step up to six times while narrating their own instincts aloud.

Doss did make one genuine departure from the source material: he substituted dark chocolate shavings for the specified semi-sweet variety, a decision he described as "totally off the cuff" and which he arrived at after reading the words "semi-sweet" on the recipe, looking at the dark chocolate he had already purchased, and concluding that it was "basically the same thing."

The resulting cake was described by guests as excellent, a verdict Doss accepted with the nod of a man who has never been surprised by his own cooking.

When reached for comment the following morning, Doss said he was planning a "totally freeform" Sunday brunch and had not yet decided what to make, though a screenshot later shared by Linda showed he had bookmarked a specific eggs Benedict recipe at 11:47 Friday night.

The recipe has a four-point-eight star rating. It has 214 reviews. Doss has not read any of them, as he prefers to go in fresh.