A dissenting opinion on the methodology of the experiment.

Your experiment determined the amount of water absorbed from the atmosphere
by a know MASS of flower. No attempt was made to measure the VOLUME. In
the cups vs. weight argument the point that is often missed is the
difficulty of the repeatability of the volume measurement. A cup of packed
flower will be more dense than a sifted one. Dipping a cup into a bag of
flower and scraping off the top does not account for the age of the flower,
its' hydration or if it was stored under another large sack of flower and
compacted.

It would be interesting to measure the change in volume as flower absorbs
moisture from the atmosphere. I would like to see the repeatability of
weights when a single person uses the same equipment to measure a cup of
flower. Then your experiment could be repeated using different conditions
of hydration.

Of course this is all nit picking unless one is attempting to communicate a
repeatable recipe to a stranger. When I attempted to decipher my mother's
recipe book after her death anything close to any sort of measurement would
have been wonderful.

A recipe for gumbo (that old woman made wonderful gumbo) went something
like:

Make a peanut butter colored roué.
Fry down a couple of links of Andouille sausage and save the grease.
Fry down a goodly amount of chopped onions and caramelize in the Adouille
grease.
Add the onions, celery and bell peppers to the roué and wilt celery.
Fill gumbo pot 2/3 full of water and bring to a boil.
etc -----

It worked for some one who had watched very closely what she had done, but
would be useless to transmit to a stranger.


"TG" > wrote in message
...
> Hello all.
>
> (I do not at any point want to discourage anyone from using either
> cups or scales simply that we use them for the right reasons.
> Knowledge is empowering after all.)
>
> A discussion recently in another group about cups v scales, brought up
> that flour and humidity thing.
>
> Since I've noticed that it's only people that bake using cups that
> ever mention this as a search on the internet confirmed, (one or two
> who used scales mentioned it but their argument didn't make any sense
> at all so I disregard it).
>
> Well in the name of balance (no pun intended) I thought I'd see what I
> could find for myself.
>
> The weather here in London had been quite dry a for a week so I
> expected the flour to be on the dryer side too.
>
> I took a bag (paper) of flour and weighed it. I also weighed an inert
> control weight.
>
> I then put a large tray in the bottom of the oven, filled it with
> boiling water and switched the oven on set to 40C.
> I then put the flour in the oven and waited on hour.
>
> After the hour was up the flour in 100% humidity had gained just 1.4%
> weight and of course the control was unchanged.
>
> I returned the flour to the oven and waited one more hour. This time
> there was no change at all. So I returned the flour to the oven.
>
> I repeated this for four hours with no further change.
>
> I then returned the flour to the cupboard. The next day the weather
> was very wet and the flour was just 0.5% above the starting weight.
>
> So, it seems my flour absorbed only 1.4% of it's weight from the water
> in the 100% humidity air at 40C. And just 0.5% when left in the
> kitchen cupboard.
>
> This really isn't significant in the slightest and I'd challenge any
> home baker to spot the difference when they were mixing.
>
> I put this to the people in the other group but they had all suddenly
> lost their voice.
>
> Again I'm not interested in discouraging people from using either cups
> or scales they both have their uses fulfilling the different needs of
> different home bakers. I just think we should use the method that
> suites us for honest and real reasons, there's no need to invent
> reasons for what we do in the kitchen. Because we are comfortable with
> that way is enough.
>
> Jim
>