system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5:Why is 350 degrees farenheit the optimal baking temperature for pretty much everything?

I know that some things are baked at higher or lower temperatures, but it seems that the vast majority of things are cooked at 350 farenheit. What's up with that?
gpt
Cooking uses a lot of water.  Heating water over the boiling point cases a phase change from a liquid to a gas.  That phase change catalyzes a lot of chemical reactions.  So temps in cooking will tend to be over the boiling point of water.

Heat causes protein to break down.  A lot of cooking is designed to make things that are hard to chew and digest easier to chew and digest and that often means breaking proteins.  That process happens at varying degrees based on heat so the higher the heat the faster proteins are affected.

But if you get the temperature too hot you get oxygen combustion - stuff burns.  Burnt food doesn't taste good and the more burned something gets the worse it tastes.

So there is a range of temperatures higher than the boiling point of water but lower than the combustion point of various ingredients where proteins are breaking down at a meaningful rate to keep the total time required to prepare the dish within some rational constraints.  Those temperature and time limits reappear time and again in cooking as a result.