I grew up in a time and place with weird measurements. Often the handwritten recipes on my mother’s recipe cards would have some ingredients in grams and some ingredients in cups, some cookbooks would be in metric and others in cups, and for some reason our measuring cups were bigger than other ones from around the world.
In my early days of learning to cook from scratch, I would always measure by volume, because I didn’t own a scale, but in more recent years I’ve found that a scale can be a really useful thing to have in the kitchen, especially for baking and preserving.
I write recipes online and in books that use both types of measurements, because I know not everyone uses the same measuring system. Here are a few of my reasons why I prefer to use metric weights for baking, and why I think a kitchen scale can be a worthwhile tool for many bakers.
1. Reliability
100g of flour is always exactly 100g, whereas the weight of 1 cup of flour can vary quite a bit depending on the flour and how it’s measured. For example, einkorn flour and oat flour weigh less per cup, and whether the cup is scooped, poured, freshly milled, or has been sitting in the bag for a while impacts the weight of the flour.
2. Practicality
Most days I am baking four loaves at a time, which is around 10 cups of flour for my favourite sourdough bread. Sometimes I am baking a lot more than this. The act of measuring out 10 or 20 or 50 cups of flour (especially if they are poured cups rather than scooped cups) seems very tedious compared to just weighing it.
Because I mill my own flour, if I want to make sure that I definitely have enough flour for my recipe, it’s easy enough to just weigh out the wheat berries before milling, rather than needing to measure again.
3. Scalability
Measuring by weight lends itself to easily scaling recipes up and down - simply double, triple, or halve all the ingredients and you have a simple calculation, without needing to figure out how to go about scaling up and down different fractions of cups.
4. Understanding how different ingredients work together
The bakers percentage system is built around measuring by weight. If you really love a recipe (or hate it) you can use the bakers percentage to calculate the different ratios of ingredients and make more bread that you love, and you can look at any new recipe and know whether the hydration of that recipe will work for you.
5. Precise measurements
When measuring by volume, it’s tempting to just round up or down to get to an even amount that is simple to measure, whereas with weight, you can measure to the nearest gram.
The type of scale that I use
I use an analogue scale, this is the one that I currently use. Digital ones that I’ve owned in the past have died on me mid-recipe, so I like that this one can’t do that!
My scale measures in 25g increments. If I want to measure something that doesn’t fit into the 25g, I just eyeball it, for example, if I want 10g of something, I just look at the dial until it’s a bit less than halfway to the next 25g increment.
When measuring salt, I measure by volume, because my scale is not accurate enough for tiny amounts, but for flour and water, this kind of scale is all you need.
To find a scale like this online, search for stuff like “analog kitchen scale” or “vintage kitchen scale” and you’ll find similar ones for sale. Make sure to check that it definitely has metric weights on it and not just pounds and ounces.
Digital scales have some benefits, mainly (if they can handle the weight) that you can just put your mixing bowl on top of them and tare the weight in between each ingredient addition, so it saves a bit of time, plus you get better accuracy, but I far prefer the resilience of having a scale that doesn’t use electricity or break down, and believe that you can definitely get all the benefits of working with the metric weight system without needing a digital scale.
May your bread be delicious, and the process of making it enjoyable. Floury regards,
Kate
The Nourishing Hearthfire
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