Weighing ingredients, specific to salts
OK, so I made this fantastic banana bread that calls for kosher salt. First time I made it by volume, second time by weighing (first time I was in a rush and didn't want to grab the scale). I think second time was better, but it was better in other ways too.
Someone(s) just asked for the recipe and I want to be clear about the salt in the recipe. I can't assume everyone will go out and buy kosher salt just to make these breads. So, I need to be able to say, "this much kosher salt, or this much table salt". I thought that would be simple enough until I started doing a little searching - all kosher salt is not created equal!
The kosher salt I have is Morton's Course Kosher salt, which now I read, is not as course as most other kosher salts. But I'm also going to to assume, that the Morton Kosher salt is the most common in many homes if people buy kosher salt because that's what they can get at most grocery stores.
So, I went to Morton's site and their faq says they don't recommend baking with it (lack of practice? experience?) and then they provide comparison charts, one being a one to one volume comparison. See here: http://www.mortonsalt.com/salt_guide/index.html#conversion_chart [1]
According to that chart, when I did the volume measurement of the morton's kosher salt, I put too much (and I do think it tasted salty). Second time, I weighed, they tasted right. So, just now I weighed a tablespoon of my Morton kosher salt (did so three times to be sure I was measuring accurately) and once I got 20 grams, the other two times I got 24 grams. The recipe calls for ELEVEN grams of kosher salt. That means I doubled the intended salt the first time I baked. According to other salt weights I've encountered, 1 tablespoon of table salt equals around 18 grams.
How can my kosher salt weigh that much more than table salt? So then, I weigh my table salt and I measure a tablespoon three times and get 32 grams, 26 grams, 28 grams on three successive tries, so around 28 grams per tablespoon. Is it my scale? (I have an older version of this scale: http://www.amazon.com/Soehnle-65105-Digital-Kitchen-Silver/dp/B000JG4C2W/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1280847660&sr=1-2 [2] ). Could old batteries be throwing things off? (I've had the scale for 4-5 years and never have needed to change the batteries). or are my ingredients "wet"? (we didn't have AC for a month while we were waiting our turn for the technicians to install new) and then the last few days we turned it off as the weather was nice. But that doesn't make sense either - my table salt was in a sealed container.
ACK!!! Now what do I do? And if weighing is more accurate than volume, what does that mean that my weights are off? Is everything off equally? Or, am I messing up proportions?
Melissa