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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
I expect to participate in "Blog Week Birthday Bastion 2024"  [13+] every day next week, and this will likely be the last link I comment on for a while. So savor it. Which should be easy enough, because it's about food. Do You Really Need to Bake With a Scale? I am legally obligated to tell you the truth, even if you don't want to hear it. You're probably better off baking with an oven, I think. So listen to me, your baking therapist: You need to stop the negative self-talk. It’s not you—it’s your measuring cup. And it’s letting you down! Which is what I've been saying. But no, I get it, I'm not an expert. My advice is that taking my advice isn't always a good idea. But I've railed on this numerous times, most recently here: "Waxy Scaley" When I tried using measuring cups on five separate occasions. I got five totally different weights. This! Is! Not! Okay! I think we get the point without all the bangs. We all measure flour differently. Some of us dip-and-sweep, others fluff-and-spoon, a few of us live on the edge and simply tilt the bag over the measuring cup, hoping for the best, and there are those who shall not be named who use liquid measuring cups (please don’t). No mention of sifting? Shame. With a baking scale, however, 125 grams of flour (the generally accepted standard weight of 1 cup all-purpose flour) remains 125 grams no matter where and who in the world you are. I could quibble about this. Unless you're using a balance scale, you're measuring weight, not mass. The same mass weighs a different amount depending on where you are on or off the planet. But I won't. Accuracy is indeed important, as is precision, but it's possible to take it too far. The trick is knowing when you're taking it too far. Why am I so focused on flour? Because every crumbly cookie, sunken cake, or leaden bread that made you believe you’re a bad baker can almost always be traced back to too much or too little flour. Not mentioned in the article: the kind of flour you're using can also be important. You know why biscuits (American biscuits, not what the UK calls cookies) are better in the South? It's not because we're better bakers. It's that the proper flour for biscuits is generally only available in the American south. This scientific study supports my assertion; also note their use of grams, not cups (though their mixing of SI and Imperial units made me twitch).But the measuring thing holds true for other ingredients. Baking soda is an essential ingredient in many baked goods, and it works because of a chemical reaction, and chemical reactions are usually driven by mass, not volume. Flour has a structural purpose in baking; given enough moisture and heat it forms a protein network that lends physical shape to your treats. That protein network is mostly gluten. This is one reason why gluten-free baked things taste like mushy ass. The benefits of a baking scale go far beyond flour, though. Ever come across measurements like “a scant ½ cup”? (I’m sorry, what?). It’s never an issue when a recipe is written with weights. I don't think I've ever seen that (in my defense, I don't bake often). But what I have seen is stuff like "heaping tablespoon." Come on. Or how about measuring sticky peanut butter or molasses or honey? Which was the focus of the last blog entry I did on this, the one I linked up there. Or what about when a recipe calls for chocolate or nuts? With so many variables—mini chips vs. regular chips vs. fèves, finely chopped vs. coarsely chopped nuts—a scale is the only way to ensure consistency. While I agree with this, there are some ingredients, like chocolate chips for the eponymous cookies, where the actual quantity is more a matter of personal preference. The point remains, though: a standard cup of Hershey's Kisses (not great chocolate, but they're basically giant chocolate chips), if you can even measure something that bulky in cups, is not going to weigh the same as a cup of mini chocolate chips. This has to do with solids vs. air voids, but that's just on a bigger scale (pun intended) than the flour problem. Even if a favorite recipe doesn’t list weights, you can use this immensely handy conversion chart from King Arthur Flour to figure them out yourself. Half my work in cooking seems to be finding these conversions online. As an aside, it doesn't matter if it's grams or ounces. As long as you're on Earth, it's close enough. Just don't confuse weight ounces with fluid ounces. Once you understand the life-changing magic of baking with a scale, you may never, ever use measuring cups again. Hold onto those spoons, though: For very small amounts, like teaspoons, I prefer to stick to volume measures. Most scales measure in 1-gram increments, so they just aren’t sensitive enough to pick up the nuances of something like ¼ teaspoon baking soda. I used to have a 0.01-gram kitchen scale. Bought it from Amazon. Later, I realized that this probably put me on a drug-dealer watch list. No, assholes, I'm just using it to get the precise amount of cornstarch measured out. By "used to have," I mean it fell off the counter once, and I replaced it with a scale that's less precise but has greater capacity. And is more durable. The article ends with a link to a hamantaschen recipe, for which we are in the wrong time of year. But that's never stopped me before. |
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