I like to think that, along with bicycles and automobiles, that baking will prove a Trojan horse for the eventual adoption of the metric system in the U.S.
Everyone I know who cooks or bakes uses the metric system. We don’t have time to pussyfoot around with ounces and pounds.
If discussion on The Fresh Loaf forums is any indication, most bread bakers here in the U.S. use the metric system because calculating baker percentages using the Incredibly Stupid system is a pain in the tuchus.
Flour is pretty much worst case in terms of volumetric measurement being inconsistent. When converting a recipe, I personally use a conversion of 140g per cup of flour, which I think is maybe slightly on the high end. The important thing is to do the conversion, then you can adjust the recipe based on results, and have some faith that you won’t get a bunch of measurement noise when you’re trying to make it again
I weigh just about everything unless it’s less than a tablespoon. It’s easier, and I don’t have to clean a bunch of measuring cups
That last point can’t be emphasized enough: baking by weight means less mess, less clean-up and it’s more precise. Precision means reliability, which means that all your friends with whom you share your recipes will be much more likely to be successful with them in their own kitchen.
Not converting from one weight to another, but from volume to weight, because different flours vary in how much a cup-measure will contain by weight (and that’s assuming consistent scooping, which is another problem). Which is why you should prefer using the scale. AP flour may be 4.5 ounces per cup, cake flour is usually around 4 ounces per cup. By using a scale, you know how much you’re getting, and getting the same every time.
Unfortunately, cookbook publishers have been pretty slow to catch up to the fact that reliable digital kitchen scales have been affordable and widely available for quite a while now. A lot of baking books are still volume-measure only. At this point, though I figure I don’t need to add any more baking books unless they’ve got weight measure included (half of my cookbook bookcase is baking books).
Very true. What I’ve found, over time, is that cooking/baking authors who use weight-measures have at least one of the following in common:
It’s even worse with irregularly shaped ingredients, like chopped pecans. A cup of chopped pecans can vary in amount, by how finely chopped they are, and even the shape of the measuring cup. I’d be happy with all dry ingredients being presented by weight rather than volume.
I can never figure out how much 1/4 cup of cilantro is. How hard did they want me to push down on it while measuring? There is a good 10:1 ratio in there. I wish people would just give weights.
I have started marking up my recipes with the weight in grams for the various ingredients. As a bonus using weights simplifies things. I just keep the mixing bowl on the scale and re-zero the scale after adding the correct amount of each of the ingredients. There is no need to dirty up the measuring cups and spoons.
For baking okay. But for cooking most of the recipes you see are just approximations of someone’s eyeballing the ingredients. Most cookbooks are untested.
Mainly useful for flour which compresses a lot but sometimes for other things. BTW, 1 cup flour = 5 ounces.
I like OXO’s scale better because the display pulls out so it isn’t hidden under the bowl.
I consider recipes to just be starting points, and usually tinker with them extensively. But when I hit on something I like, I write down what I’ve done because I want to be able to consistently recreate it 6 months later. And that’s better done by using weight rather than volume for dry ingredients.
Uh oh, somewhere along the line I determined a cup of flour was 8 oz!! I think I did that empirically. Are those 4-5 oz measurements for sifted flour? The challah recipe works, but I guess I should be careful with new recipes. I haven’t tried using the scale for the oil and honey, I just measure the oil 1st so the honey glides out of the measuring cup.
I love my OXO scale. I have the larger, metal top one, with a 5kg limit. Very reliable. I’ve had it for over six years now and it’s never needed recalibration.
I use this. It’s granular enough and whatever I’m baking comes out perfect every time. I buy whichever flour (in the category I need) at whichever grocery store I happen to be at … at whatever time of year. I haven’t run into any issues yet.
This one’s easy: Do you still have cilantro left in the bunch? Chop it up, and add that in, too.
Not really necessary for nigh-incompressible solids like rice or dry beans. But flour and brown sugar and such, absolutely.
That was my point…solids of any kind require weight even if you think they are incompressible…they probably still have room for air.
Who cares what they look like? Which one tastes the best? Actually, the best tasting one isn’t listed: browned butter + extra egg yolk + extra vanilla.
Crap. Now I have to make cookies. Oh well, it’s an easy way to make a bunch of people happy.
…and many inside as well. Now if you all would stop referring to the gram as a measure of weight and treat it properly as the unit of mass that it is, we could all be doing things right. (You Brits can keep your goofy spelling too.)
