I would tare the bowl on the scale, and add however many grams of flour my adjusted recipe calls for. Then i would pull out my measuring spoons and add 2t of baking sugar and 1t of salt to the same bowl. Then i might give it a stir and tare again, if, for instance, i wanted to add shortening or molasses, which i find easier to weigh than to measure by volume, and add them slowly to the same bowl until i hit the appropriate weight. When I’m done adding all the weighed items to that bowl, i would put away my scale.
I basically never weighed anything until i realized i could tare my mixing bowl and weigh directly into that. That was a groundbreaking revelation to me, and is why i now find it easier to weigh several items than to use volume measures for them.
I agree. That’s true for a lot of aspects of baking, especially including when a custard or sugar syrup has cooked enough. That’s one of the reasons YouTube is so good for recipes. You can see what a stage is supposed to look like, and see how the ingredients transitioned to that consistency.
Weight of flour is easier to replicate precisely than volume - I mean, you might measure the same volume twice, but it may not be the same actual quantity of flour twice due to packing and aeration of the material - if you measure by weight, it’s hard not to get the same amount of flour each time.
Yeah, but if I have sugar in a different measuring bowl than the flour, I will measure the sugar with volume. I find it faster to stick a measuring cup into the sugar bin than to weigh it. So I have some dry/bulk ingredients by weight, and others by volume. Works for me, and that’s who my recipes are for.
Also:
That’s not strictly true for things that are hydroscopic. The same amount of flour weighs slightly more on a wet day than a dry one. It’s not enough of a difference to really matter for flour, but it does matter for brown sugar (which is a pretty common ingredient in American cookies). You actually get a more consistent measure of brown sugar by packing it into a measuring cup than by weighing it, and I always measure it that way, after once noticing that my weight was WAY off when the brown sugar was kinda dry.
I agree that you get a more consistent measure of flour by weighing it than by putting it into cups, though.
Heh, I rarely if ever use a measuring spoon, and I eyeball 1/4, 1/2, and 1 cup pretty accurately. My gf on the other hand has a sink full of measuring spoons, cups, etc. when she cooks.
Our hens produce different sized eggs, anywhere from a medium to a jumbo on any given day. While preparing a meal I frequently taste and then add an ingredient not in the original recipe (assuming I’m even using a recipe).
If I’m making stew, i don’t measure anything. If I’m making my family recipe for birthday cake, i measure everything carefully. And only use “large” eggs.
I agree with your wife. I think if you make those three recipes you will know how much flour you want to use going forward. Just remember to write down notes. Let us know the results.
I suspect you’re talking out of your ass here. It’s not Europeans, it’s serious bakers the world over. Unless you’re a very good baker and can develop your own recipes, that’s a recipe for disaster, by weight or volume.
Have you not heard of baker’s percentages? Everything scales according to the weight of the flour in the recipe. That’s how the pros do it. And all by weight, because volume is inconsistent between brands and how it’s sifted, etc.
As for the OP, I think I’d just decide what sort of flour I would use the most commonly in a given recipe (brand and type), and see how much a cup weighs, and do the math from there. So if you use White Lily for biscuits, figure out how much a cup of White Lily weighs, and if you use Gold Medal bread flour for bread, figure out how much a cup of that weighs.
And despite it being a science, it’s not that exacting in the sense that ATK and KA’s differing weight per cup is going to make that much of a difference in your final recipe (assuming what you’re doing is translating older volumetric recipes into by-weight recipes.
Huh? I’m a good baker, but I’m not a great baker. I have friends who are much better than I. But i develop my own recipes all the time.
I saw a pretty cinnamon star pastry on someone’s Facebook page. Hmm, that looks like fun. Google a few recipes. Interpolate most of it. Add a little more cinnamon because i really like cinnamon.
I make small modifications to many cookbook recipes. That family cake recipe that I do exactly, every time? The original recipe has you sift the flour 4 times before measuring out x cups. That was a pita. Once i realized how useful scales were, i carefully sifted the flour 4 times, and measured it onto my scale. And wrote down (rounded) the number of grams. Now i weigh it, and sift it once. Works great.
I follow a recipe for pie crust. The filling? My husband and i made that up. And wrote down the measurements. (In ounces of fruit, because “fill this bowl to the top” wasn’t giving consistent results.)
Anyway, you need some basic skills to develop your own recipes, but you don’t need to be “a very good baker”.
Considering that there are a surprising number of people who can screw up boxed brownie mix, or otherwise mangle something easy like chocolate chip cookies, I’d say that merely being able to bake from scratch puts you in the good baker category relative to most people.
Now if we take that as baseline competence, then yeah, you don’t have to be “very good” to develop your own recipes. But compared to the general public, I’d say it is “very good”.
Flour
1 cup all-purpose flour = 120 grams (King Arthur), 141 grams (Cook’s Illustrated), 130 grams (Smitten Kitchen, at least 80% of the time)
I normally use 120g for 1 cup of flour and 200g for 1 cup of sugar. This is based on my own measurements when I switched to weighing ingredients some time ago.
In the last year I’ve started using more one bowl recipes, which cuts down on the dishes when baking. That means I also use the scale for portioning vegetable oil and butter. I still use measuring spoons for baking powder, baking soda and salt. Depending on the recipe, I may eyeball the spices and extracts.
I found out recently that the weight of a Polish cup of flour is significantly different from 120g. I think my colleague said 170g, but I’m not positive.
In Poland a cup is usually a metric cup, or 250ml instead of a US cup of approximately 236.6ml. Doesn’t seem like enough difference to account for a 50g difference for 1 cup of flour. There must be other factors involved if 170g is the actual weight being used.
I think we are left with the possibility that all flour particles are entangled in some manner that allows mass to transfer between particles remotely. Just as all the air in a room might spontaneously move to one half of the room all the mass in a 50 lb. sack of flour could spontaneously transfer into a single cup but it is extraordinarily unlikely to happen. So we are only be able to observe a difference of a few grams from cup to cup of flour. It’s just a hypothesis based on the empirical data available, more research is needed.
I did some more research. In the interest of science I made shrimp and sausage gumbo. After prepping the vegetables, shrimp, and sausage I made a dark roux from 2/3 cup of oil and 1 cup of flour. I weighed a cylindrical 8oz. US measuring cup at 50g, then packed flour in and leveled off the top with the back of knife and weighed it again. The cup and flour together weighed 202g, so the flour alone weighed 150g. This information is relatively useless since neither my scale or the measuring cup are calibrated. What I observed in preparing the roux was a lot of bubbling in the first few minutes that showed there was substantial water and air contained within the flour. Had I weighed the oil first and then weighed the roux after it was done I could have determined the weight of the flour alone more accurately. But it’s further evidence that determining a consistent weight for a known volume of flour when making gumbo involves more careful and controlled measurement. But so far experimentation has not disproved my theory of entangled flour particles.
If I remember correctly, we were talking about old recipes, which have odd measurements. And we were talking about cups specifically, because within a family, it would have been different because a cup was whatever cup that that family used. Using weight to measure dry ingredients is much easier.
I don’t remember if the Polish cup we were discussing was an old Polish cup or the current Polish cup. The main point is that it is quite different than an American cup). When converting a recipe from volumne to weight, it’s important to know which cup is being used in the original recipe.
You take your measuring cup. You measure out of the bag 1 cup. You dump it in the bowl for the scale. Write down or commit to memory the weight the scale says.
Next time it’s August. You measure out exactly one cup, dump it in bowl…the scale says a different weight. Oh, no.
So believing what you had weighed before you remove flour til you get to that weight.
Something seems wrong.
First why measuring cup if you’re gonna weigh?
Seems like a bunch of extra steps.
Next who says your scale is precise?
3rd…humidity.
I say you better pretty much know by sight or feel what the correct amount should be.
I’ve baked lots of corn bread, biscuits, yeast rolls, pie crust and cakes.
Humidity affects all these.
Extra steps never help.
Bad scales exist.
I’ve never weighed flour in my life.
I have a kitchen scale but it’s to weigh my portions on my restricted diet. Not baking.
I think it’s a fancy schmancy way to do what cooks and bakers have done forever. Look, feel, taste. Your best kitchen tools are built in.
Works for me, and that’s who my recipes are for.