In the U.S. recipes for home use are nearly always written with the intent that you measure ingredients by volume in measuring cups. A woman named Fannie Farmer developed the U.S. standards of measure in the late 19th century. Because she felt most home cooks wouldn’t have a scale, she developed volume measures, feeling this would make her recipes more accessible to home cooks across America. Cups and teaspoons, every woman had those in her kitchen. She was right; her standards stuck and are still used by home cooks today.
Professional bakers measure flour and all other dry ingredients by weight: a practice called scaling. In some pastry shops, ALL ingredients are weighed, including eggs, milk, etc. This ensures an exact and consistent measurement every single time the recipe is used.
Are you thinking, "man, you are seriously anal retentive, it can’t make that big of a difference...get a life!" You could be right, but enough about me.
Let's Experiment with Flour
If you buy 3 different brands of flour and using a standard 1 cup measure, take and weigh a scoop from each bag, you would find that not only are each of them different, none of them weigh 8 oz. Scoop again from the same bag and compare with your previous scoop, chances are you scooped either more or less the second time.
All of these things will cause the flour to be more or less compact
- How you handle the flour
- If its packed in the bag tightly
- If its fluffy
- How was it processed
- How long it was sitting in the bag at the bottom of a pallet
And in each case, you will measure a different volume of flour into an 8 oz scoop. A more compact flour means the flour has less volume or takes up less space, hence you will get more flour in the cup. A less compact flour yields less flour. Get the idea?
BUT when measured by weight, 8 oz of flour is 8 oz of flour, no matter how fluffy or compact: it’s always the same. THIS is why we weigh and the same principle applies for sugars and other dry ingredients, oats, nuts, chocolate chips, cocoa etc.
Baking is a chemistry of ratios. The ratio of sugar to fat for example will determine how crisp your cookies turn out. Increase the ratio of fat to flour and those same cookies will melt all over the sheet pan. In some small home recipes, the discrepancy caused by these variances may be so small that you don’t notice any difference or just blame yourself for some unknown error, which is even worse. As the size of the batch increases, by doubling it for that class party for example, so does the variance and the impact the change in ratios causes. Now the cookies look and taste noticeably different.
While I will admit that many (not me of course) pastry chefs are
bordering on anal retentiveness and a lust for exactness, there is
a valid reason to weigh ingredients. It ensures every product turns
out exactly as expected no matter who makes it. At home, I still
weigh everything with my trusty $10 electronic scale, which you can
find at your local discount super store. Professional recipes are
available in texts and online, so if you are an avid baker,
frustrated by recipes that don’t seem to work….invest in a scale
and a professional recipe book and trust me, you will find your
recipes turn out as expected every time.
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