On 26 Oct 2006 08:14:42 -0700, Merryb > wrote:

> For general home baking, measuring is ok- When you are baking on a
> larger scale, using weights is a lot more accurate. Anyway, most people
> don't have a scale in their kitchen.

In the end, the feel of the dough is what is important, and that the
feel be correct for that bread.

Professional bakers weigh carefully, and then they feel the dough to
make sure it feels right. And then they taste it to make sure, really
sure, that they put the salt in.

I used to be a weight skeptic. I'm not sure if it was here or in
alt.bread.recipes a number of people weighed their cups of flour. The
range was from slighlty under 100 to over 200 grams per cup, depending
on how they filled the cup. All of these were with all-purpose flour.

Worse, there were people who had as much as a 25% cup to cup variation.

Actually, if you leave the United States, you'll probably find most
homes have set of kitchen scales, or two. And given the very
reasonable price of a decent set of My Weigh scales on eBay, I think
that they are a good investment for bakers in the USA also. (I've had
excellent luck with My Weigh. Bad luck with Digi Weigh.)

If you know what you are doing, you can use cups successfully. If you
don't know what you're doing, scales might not save you.

When I started baking professionally, I discarded all but one set of
cups and tablespoons - I still need to convert recipes from time to
time. Though I no longer bake professionally (though I hope to start
again soon), I still weigh everything. It's easier. It's faster.
And it's more consistent.

How do I convert from cups to weight? I put a bowl on a scale, turn
it on, zero it, and then measure out the liquid ingredients, noting
the weights, and zeroing after each addition. Then I add salt, sugar
and other small powdered ingredients, weighing and zeroing as I go.

If the recipe is a multi-flour recipe, I add the smaller amounts of
flour to the bowl, weighing and zeroing as I go. So, if it calls for
2 cups of rye, 2 cups of whole wheat and 4 cups of white flour, I add
the 2 cups of rye, check the weight, add the 2 cups of whole wheat and
again check the weight. Then I finish up with the last flour as
described in the next paragraph.

If the recipe is for just one kind of flour, or if I am finishing up a
multi-flour recipe, I turn on the scales and put a fresh bowl (clean
and dry) on the scales. I don't zero the scales, but I do add twice
the flour the recipe calls for, check the weight and write it down. I
don't zero the scales because most electonic scales shut themselves
off after a while, and then they forget what was on them. Since the
next step will take a while, a pencil and paper and a good reference
point work really well here.

At this point, I stir the stuff in the first bowl and start adding the
flour from the second bowl. I usually start by adding about 1/2 the
flour called for. Once the dough is too hard to stir, I turn it out
into a floured board and start kneading. Of course the flour on the
board came from the second bowl. Any flour I knead in also comes from
the second bowl. Once the dough feels right, I cover it and let it
start rising.

And then I check the weight of the second bowl. I subtract that
weight from the starting weight, and I know how much flour I added to
the dough.

At this point, I clean and put the cups away. If I need to adjust the
recipe, I adjust the weights. I usually put the recipe into a
spreadsheet so I can more easily scale it up and down.

I find that I can, at this point, skip the whole "add a little flour
at a time" game and just weigh and mix, which is a great time savings
all by itself.

Hope that helps,
Mike