Someone once asked me if I’d convert the metric recipe amounts on my website to ‘standard’ measures. Made I laugh.
Ok, you’re pouring your stuff into the bowel, and you pour too much in, what then?
You take some out again until you have the correct weight.
I think you meant to write grams rather than ml. As already mentioned by Kevbo for Germany and you for France*, and now me for Norway, these are common across Europe. Quicker than using a scale, and accurate enough for baking.
*Unless France really does have weird measuring devices showing 500ml of sugar, milk and flour on different scales.
You take some out?
If the recipe calls for 450 grams of flour and you have 454 grams or 447 grams I really don’t think it will matter.
If it’s in your bowel it no longer matters if it’s according to the recipe.
Accidents happen less frequently if you’re careful. If you’re measuring flour by weight into a bowl that already has other ingredients in it, with the scale re-zeroed, you slow down as you approach the right weight.
Personally, I don’t tend to work that way, because my favourite mixing bowl is quite heavy and when full, would exceed the weight limit of my electronic scales, so I tend to weigh in a small dish on the scales and tip each ingredient into the mixing bowl as I go - I tend to weigh the butter or fat straight after the flour, so the residual dusting stops it sticking in the measuring dish.
When I’m making cakes, I weigh the eggs (in their shells) and adjust the other ingredients to fit them - it’s a really reliable way to get consistent results.
So you keep adjusting back and forth until it’s perfect?
It’s been said that it’s quicker and easier to use mass instead of volume, but that sounds both slower and harder.
Doesn’t that make things inaccurate (which is one of the things the pro-mass people accused using volume of)?
I can’t see why. I tend to use Mangetout’s method where you weigh ingredients individually and then then transfer them to a mixing bowl
With just a little care, that’s not necessary. Really, this is an absurd objection - kitchen scales display the measurement pretty much in real time - it’s not impossible to make mistakes, but it’s not at all difficult to avoid them.
Come on. The weight variance between measured cups of flour is likely to be greater than the amount you’re raising an eyebrow at here.
Meh, I don’t have a scale, although I want one but I did take a chemistry class or two where it was actually important to be accurate within so many sigfigs. I think the longest I ever took to measure out something was 30 seconds.
Yes. But not in a significant way. Grams are really effing small and a few extra or a few less will not hurt your recipe the way severely compacted flour can. I don’t really think baking requires being that accurate and don’t see much functional difference between measuring by weight and volume other than habit. I used to bake everything using a one third measuring cup because that’s all I had. The quarter and half cups were basically guesses but everything turned out all right.
What I mean is: your objections might as well be: “What if I accidentally use salt instead of sugar? What if I accidentally throw the flour over my head instead of into the mixing bowl?” Weighing ingredients does not demand an absurd level of additional care.
ETA: (above in response to TravisFromOR)
I guess that’s the thing–I’m extremely uncoordinated, and in Chemistry (both High School and college), it would take me several minutes to measure things accurately.
“Severely impacted flour”-- that’s why you sift things.
Thanks for explaining that to me. I still really can’t see the advantage to mass over volume, though.
This US-centrism is one of the big bugs about trying to translate recipes. In metric recipes, it’s usually given in grams, so regardless the package size in your country, you can figure it out. Ditto for “one package of haselnuts” or similar: they usually come in 200g, but the recipe says “200 g” in addition to “1 package”, so you can figure it out even if your country has different packages.
Which means, when reading a recipe in English on the internet, instead of simply running the measurements through a converter tool, you have to figure out: is this using English or US measurements, liquid or dry ounces? It’s not as if the recipes give any hints!
In addition to there being a different number of fluid ounces in a pint for Imperial vs US, the ounces themselves are not the same.
The one that bugs me most is: “A pint’s a pound - the world around!”
Um. No, it just isn’t (and not just because everyone else uses metric).
In UK Imperial: “A pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter” (but we’re not so presumptuous as to declare this as global)
Bah.
The rhyme wouldn’t work otherwise:
A pint’s a pound in those few countries that still use the imperial system, yet bastardize it so a pint has sixteen ounces, and a pint of water weighs a pound…
True. I don’t think I have ever seen a recipe using weight instead of volume (at least I don’t remember one).
As Mangetout says, we have our own rhyme, which works perfectly. (I know it as “A pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter” which scans slightly better, I think.)
What I want to know is why Americans started using volume for recipes when it seems that Europeans have been using mass for generations (including, presumably, back when they settled America?)
Well, sure, but it just makes anyone saying it sound like they’re unaware of the world that exists beyond the periphery of the USA.