FoodBanter.com - View Single Post

Graham

On 2020-04-07 10:53 a.m., wrote:
> On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 10:39:10 AM UTC-5, Cindy Hamilton wrote:
>>
>> On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 11:22:51 AM UTC-4, graham wrote:
>>
>>> The other day I made a couple of kg of bread dough from a newly opened
>>> bag of flour.
>>> I used a 250ml measuring cup as a handy scoop to put the flour into a
>>> bowl on the scale and was astounded when it weighed 175g. A lot of US
>>> recipes use a 4oz/114g equivalence for a US 236ml cup but as many
>>> devotees of weighing will attest, it all depends on how you fill the cup.
>>> That 175g measure equates to 168g for a 236ml US cup.
>>> I then used a whisk to stir up the flour in the bag and spooned the
>>> flour to fill the cup. That weighed 134g (126g US).
>>> No wonder my elderly neighbour complained that she couldn't make decent
>>> pastry as she used volume measure.
>>
>> I favor appropriate technology for the task. Volumetric measurements
>> are fine for crumble, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and a host
>> of other things. I use mass for pizza dough. If I made bread, I'd
>> use mass for that, too.
>>
>> Cindy Hamilton
>>
> I'm no baker even by mud pie makers standards but I've watched enough baking
> shows to know that for bread they *always* advocate weighing your ingredients.
> But for cookies, pies and such the regular measuring cup method has worked
> wonders for years. And if F Murtz is so disconcerted by the measurements
> for a simple American recipe I'd suggest s/he pass on by any recipes from
> the other side of the pond.
>
Funnily enough, Joan, you can make a *very* acceptable loaf of bread "by
eye" but for pastry and cakes, and even cookies, weighing is preferable,
even essential. As Emeril used to say: "Baking is chemistry" and he
always weighed when he baked on his TV show.