The Best Baked Potato Recipe

i feel silly. yes, the new best recipe has a recipe for baked potatoes. so, why not try it? it will be hard to tell you about it since i have a policy of not giving away the actual recipes from the books i use (ostensibly from copyright concerns, but mainly 'cause i hate typing that stuff out). let's see, you preheat the oven, then place potatoes inside until they're done. i won't tell you the temperature so as to protect the integrity of the recipe. i will tell you that they tested many variations, to include pricking and not pricking the skin, high heat vs. low heat, placing a metal skewer inside, wrapping in foil, coating with oil, etc., and found that the best approach is simply scrubbing the potatoes, drying them, and placing them in the oven directly on the rack and baking. the primary hint they give is that you must cut them open immediately upon taking them out of the oven in order to maintain fluffy white insides. if you don't, steam will build up inside and when you finally cut the potato open, you'll have firm, muscley-textured potatoes. so, i followed their recipe to the letter, and came out with tender, fluffy potatoes. toppings are up to you.