August 13, 2011 - 10:36am
Newbie to measuring by weight & using percentages finds another reason to do so
This may be obvious to everyone else but I was delighted at how easy it was this morning to add the last cup or so left in a bag of flour to a recipe because I just took the resulting weight of the flour and recalculated the salt, yeast, and water.
The recipe called for 700g flour. I had 864g in the bag. I divided 864/700 and got a constant of 1.234. Then I just multiplied the gram amounts of the other ingredients by the constant and got my new amounts. Since I'm making rolls, I can also use the constant to figure out how many rolls to make. 12 x 1.234 = 14.8 rolls or close enough to 15 for home baking purposes.
Okay, maybe obvious to those of you who have always measured this way but to this American home cook, it's a revelation.
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Once you get used to weighing baking ingredients, you will find you are weighing other things as well. For instance, I weigh the coffee beans for our morning coffee. It is easier than volumetric measures.
Ford
....And that's why kids have to learn mathematics, algebra. People use them even if they don't realize they're using them.
It wasn't until I started using metric weights and embraced the bakers percent system that I began to feel like I understood the process and the difference a small change can make in a formula. I am so much more confident as a baker today after switching to metrics and the B%.
Eric
And another has seen the light and embraced the way of the scale. LOL I actually have 2 scales, just in case one of them goes on the fritz. I learned early on to weigh ingredients and the baker's percentages have been extremely helpfull in scaling recipes up and down. Welcome to the "Light Side" of bread baking. LOL
Welcome to the world of measurements. I too had never used a scale when baking. Like JoeV I have back ups because now I am lost without mine.
Janet
I too keep a backup scale...just in case.
Jeff
Since I 'got hooked' on weighing ingredients, I've also have found another use for my scale. I keep a salt water aquarium, and used to measure out cup after cup of salt to make water for water changes. Sometimes I'd get it just right, other times I would loose track of how many cups I added, (was that cup number seven, or cup number eight?) or find the mix was off for some other reason.
Now I just pull out the scale, and pour the salt into a bowl.
Simple and fast.
Just simply........Welcome to the civilization! :D
best wishes for your brighter breadmaking future,
lumos ;)
...when you speak to your measuring like they're your ex-spouse, "I don't trust you anymore! You are a cup of lies!"
(Or when you find that the only useful thing on the (American) nutrition label is the part where is says (x quantity = so many grams)).
I'd been using cups to measure liquid for a long time, until my breadmaking became really serious some years ago and started measuring water in weight, rather than in a cup. One day I filled all my measuring cups (I have nearly 10 of them. Don't ask!) with water and checked the weight on a digital scale. Out of nearly 10 cups, I only had 2 cups (both Japanese ones that came with a Japanese rice cooker and a bread machine) that were accurate. All others (including another Japanese cup I bought myself) were proved to be just incorrect.....