I’ve recently purchased America’s Test Kitchen’s Desserts Illustrated book. I love ATK’s books because they not just tell you how to make something, but they also tell you WHY you’re doing it a certain way. I trust them completely.
I also own a copy of King Arthur’s All Purpose Baker’s Companion. It also gives the hows any whys. I trust it completely, too.
They both say to measure by weight. Between them, Alton Brown, and Brian Lagerstrom, I’ve been using weight to measure, and have been converting my personal recipes to weight measurements.
Right - on to the actual question:
ATK gives the weight of a cup of flour as 5 ounces (142 grams). King Arthur gives the weight of a cup of flour as 4 1/4 ounces (120 grams) whom should I go with in my personal recipes?
King Arthur is different from All Purpose Flour (more protein), so maybe there is a difference in density? Although that is more than a 15% difference, so it doesn’t seem like that would account for it.
I would measure out cups of flour (dip and swipe method) of both kinds, over different humidity and temperature conditions, and see what you get, and be guided by that.
Edited to add; this site says a cup of all-purpose flour is “exactly 125 grams” rounded to the nearest integer.
This page from ATK explains how they came up with the 5 oz value:
To determine our standard weight for flour, we had dozens of volunteers measure out 1 cup, weighed the results, and took the average (5 ounces) as our standard.
I imagine that different flours will also have slightly different densities. I guess none of this really answers the question.
Europeans tend to weigh ingredients. I consider this a colossal waste of time; I can measure the proper amounts of ingredients with measuring cups/spoons in a fraction of the time (Q: how much does 5/16th of a tsp of popcorn salt weigh?).
What is important is consistency in measurement.
E.g., brown sugar should always be measured packed. Flour, not. (and, be aware that cake flour is treated differently than regular flour; sifted/unsifted, etc.)
How much does an egg weigh? What’s a “large” egg? “XL”?? Should you be scaling all of your other ingredients, proportionately, to correspond with the ratio of the eggs you just used to the nominal weight of those eggs? Should you remove some portion of the eggs to meet some nominal weight?
In general, you should also only use recipes as a starting point for YOUR recipes. You should make a practice of fine tuning them each time you make one and tracking how they evolve. I think you will find this effort very rewarding (and, you don’t risk straying too far afield if you make small, incremental changes).
(E.g., the Rx that I started with for biscotti called for 3 eggs. I’m now at 6 with the same dry ingredients and the result is much better and far more consistent!)
It varies. Which is exactly why it’s better to measure by weight than volume in the first place.
You shouldn’t scale your other ingredients to the nominal weight of those eggs, but to their actual weight. Which is, again, why you should weigh things.
And maybe you can use cups and spoons quicker than you can weigh, but that’s mostly just because you lack experience and don’t have the right tools. People used to cooking by weight can do it quite quickly indeed. Except that they don’t waste time measuring the popcorn salt, by any method, and certainly not to the precision implied by 5/16 of a tsp.
You don’t know they lack experience or don’t have the tools.
I have never measured much. Never have.
I’ve never taken an adult cooking class. Have been cooking since an early age.
I turn out pretty decent, well received baked goods.
I own a scale. I own measuring cups and spoons.
Generally don’t use them.
I taught my kids to use them. Of course they mostly followed what I’ve done, not what I said. They cook well.
Exactly. Weight is the method for precision, which is seldom required in the kitchen, except for baking. And 5/16 of a teespoon is one third for all practical purposes: it pretends to be accurate, but it is only thoughtlessly so. Like the newspaper that reported in English that a comet was about 6.2137 miles across, which, when checked, was badly translated from SI units, where it read “about 10 km”. Pseudo-precision where it is not called for is hogwash.
And even for baking, it seldom needs to be that precise. Think about all the recipes we see that call for (for example) 3 cups of flour, 1 egg, 1 cup of sugar, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, etc. Isn’t it odd that somehow those always seem to work out to such nice numbers?
Baking is all about ratios. Different Rxs have different “sensitivities” to those ratios. I’ve tuned my biscotti recipe (over a period of 40 years, baking them at least EVERY week) to a point where even tiny changes in ratios yields a noticeable change (bad) in the outcome (as reported by folks consuming them).
OTOH, my cheesecake Rx can tolerate big changes in the amount of cream cheese, or eggs, etc. without a noticeable change in bake time or finished product.
And 5/16 of a teespoon is one third for all practical purposes: it pretends to be accurate, but it is only thoughtlessly so.
Yet, @Chronos suggests you should scale the dry ingredients by the ratio of the actual egg weight to the weight indicated in the original Rx? So, if I happen to end up with a 64g egg instead of a 63g egg, I should scale the salt up by a factor of 1.015? Really? And, you expect to do that calculation and weighing QUICKLY?
5/16tsp is 1/4tsp (which is a standard measure) and a “pinch” (which is another standard measure). There is no “1/3 tsp” measure. Measuring that “precise” quantity is a matter of dipping each spoon, in succession, into the salt container, scraping it level and then depositing it in the mixing bowl. Perhaps 10 seconds – including the time to open and close the container?
The point there is “where it is not called for”. If your exposure to Rxs is just reproducing something that you read in a book and settling for the result, then why weigh to any precision greater than the nearest 10g? Surely there is no difference in taste or chemistry between 3g (1/2t) of baking soda and 5g (1t)? 15g (1T)?!
@needscoffee You’ll note that you specified the “nice units” in MY measuring system. I simply converted it to a weight-based representation to show what THOSE “nice” numbers would look like.
See? That’s the thing, ATK uses King Arthur’s AP flour. Obviously, in their recipes, I’ll used their measurements, and in KA’s recipes I’ll use theirs. I’m just trying to figure out how to convert my recipes.
These are baking recipes, where ratios are important. Maybe I’ll split the difference, and try 130 grams per cup. I guess I’ll have to make another batch of chocolate chip cookies.