The earlier post reminds me: you should really get a kitchen scale. For baking, there's just no substitute. Depending on weather condidtions and the container you keep it in, the same amount of flour can vary by almost 100% by volume. Professional cooks weigh.
This Oxo scale looks pretty nice, and I'm a big fan of their products, but there are cheaper ones, and you can almost always pick up a bargain at a kitchen outlet store. Things to look for:
1) Taring--you should be able to hit a button and have the scale reset itself to zero before you add the next ingredient. This lets you do everything in one bowl.
2) Both metric and english measurements. That lets you use recipes from around the world.
3) Finely grained measurements--don't buy anything that isn't sensitive to at least a gram/an eighth of an ounce.
4) Good large surface--you don't want to fiddle with it
5) Small footprint--the tall models with artistically architectural bars leading up to a glass platform look cool, but you can't store it anywhere. Go for something that's basically flat and and inch or so thick so you can tuck it away when you're not using it.
6) Volume: for things like stock bones or fruit, it's nice to have a scale that goes up to at least 10 pounds.
Thanks Alton Brown.
Been meaning to do this, you reminded me, quick trip to Target; it's done.
Thanks.
My wife thinks I'm great (in this respect anyway) because I like to cook and know her dress size.
Should I tell her that my "love" of cooking is really a subset of my love of the gadgets used in cooking and that it's just a guy thing after all?
The volume of flour may change, but doesn't its weight also change? In other words, as it adds and loses moisture, won't you be getting different amounts of flour if you go by weight? I'm not saying volume is better, I just wonder how much measuring by weight helps.
V. good advice. Check out the My Weigh (or MyWeigh) 7001DX. Fifteen+ pound capacity, lots of features, easy to use. It's available sometimes on eBay for about $25. I paid about $35 for mine, and I love it.
being pedantic for a moment:
the height of an object has no relationship to its footprint.
Sensitive down to a gram?? I guess if you're trafficking in large quantities. But me, personally, I buy by the eighth, so I like to have it accurate to 0.1 grams. Remember: an eighth of an ounce is a tad bit over 3.5 grams!
Minderbender,
The weight of flour as compared to the volume has mostly to do with how it's stored and how it's put into the measurement vessel. Flour is a highly irregular powder, and shaking/tapping/compression can vastly change the density of the stuff. Mass is the end-all-be-all measurement of how much flour you have, and since we all live at almost exactly 1G of gravitational force, weight = mass.
When I say 1 gram, I have given you a mass, which is an exact measurement of how "much" is there. Weight is actually measured in Newtons, not grams, but again, since we're all facing about the same force of gravity, the weight can tell you the mass. For the record 1 newton = about 98 grams at sea level. And about 97.5 grams on the top of mount Everest.
The moisture point you make is valid, but a much smaller portion of the overall weight/volume difference than is packing. Also, moisture messes with volume too, by causing clumps and the like. Besides, without stupendously expensive laboratory scales and an oven test, there is simply no way to tell how moist your flour is with much precision.
Stephen - Similar to me, you don't seem to have learned the gram/oz conversions from baking.
Could be good word problems for high school math, though. "If Johnny buys an eighth for $50 and sells 2 grams to Suzy at a 25% markup, how much will he charge?"
It's also nice to have a counting function. I don't really use counting for cooking but it works great for figuring out how many bolts or nuts are in a box without the tedium of counting the whole box.
A higher capacity scale, like the ten pounds that MM mentioned, is also useful for measuring lawn fertilizer and such. Because of the possibility of contamination, I have a separate scale in the garage for this purpose. Todays scales are cheap enough that I can afford more than one.
Note that the display resolution is not necessarily the same as accuracy. Read the specs.
It's also nice to have a counting function. I don't really use counting for cooking but it works great for figuring out how many bolts or nuts are in a box without the tedium of counting the whole box.
A higher capacity scale, like the ten pounds that MM mentioned, is also useful for measuring lawn fertilizer and such. Because of the possibility of contamination, I have a separate scale in the garage for this purpose. Todays scales are cheap enough that I can afford more than one.
Note that the display resolution is not necessarily the same as accuracy. Read the specs.
This is excellent advice to all your sober readers. This is old news to everyone else.
You people are posers. I can tell because you don't say "eight-ball."
My understanding (from my brother, who studied cooking in Paris) is that really high-level chefs, e.g., pastry chefs in 3 star French restaurants, have a humidity gauge in the kitchen so they can adjust the recipes appropriately. I've never been that professional, but I have certainly learned that the same ingredients can behave very differently in a hot, humid beach house than they do in a dry winter city apartment.
Thanks to Alton Brown I've been a scale user for over 5 years now. But I still struggle to find good baking recipes using weight (which Corriher's Bakewise better damn well do). I also have never found a nicely formatted list of weight/volume conversions for the top 20 baking ingredients. Can anyone provide links/recommendations for either?
Rob,
Of all the people I didn't expect to hear the term "eight-ball" from it is you.
Of all the people I didn't expect to hear the term "eight-ball" from it is you.
Oh, come on. I'm merely a right-wing nutjob. The mouse is a Christian right-wing nutjob. I think he's higher on the eight-ball surprise scale than me.
Jesus. It's like Cindy McCain started a blog.
Jesus. It's like Cindy McCain started a blog.
...Okay, that was funny.
They're also handy for packages. In case anyone doesn't know, you can pay postage and print shipping labels for the post office online, but you need the precise weight. Never having to waste time in line for a package again is easily worth $25 or so.
davido,
Similarly, my love and appreciation for gardening took a quantum leap when I discovered drip irrigation.
Oh, come on. I'm merely a right-wing nutjob. The mouse is a Christian right-wing nutjob. I think he's higher on the eight-ball surprise scale than me.
Mouse is in da hizouse, and Mouse says shaddup, kracker foo, or I'll bust a cap in your donkey-moon. Dat crap don't fly on da West Side, yo. We ridez low and dirty in da hood and an old-skool gang bang is only a phonecall away.
***
Sorry, where were we? I was just raiding a pantry in some gangster rapper's LA mansion and I don't think all of the white powder was flour.
There's hardly a day that goes by where I don't use my own kitchen scale. It's a invaluable tool -- you'll love it.
I like how people went straight to coke and passed on weed. I think this shows how far we have come.
correction: Steven seemed to be talking about weed but the rest of you seemed to be discussing another substance. Of course this might just be an assumption I'm making that one does not buy weed in grams. The other (very poor) assumption I'm making is that anyone who posts here lives in the USA.
I find it sad how few alternatives to the $50 scale have been posted! Talk to me, people!
My Escali scale was about $15 and it is fantastic. No bells and whistles, but, I have 2 of them, and I once compared them side by side and they agreed with each other to the exact gram. So it's precision is excellent, and I'm guessing its accuracy is good too. It allows you to easily convert from grams to ounces and vice-versa in one button. It comes in lots of different colours, so it can match your kitchen. Wow, I sound like the Home Shopping Network now, but I seriously love that scale.
Coincidentally, making polenta tonight I poured too much cornmeal into the measuring cup and, attempting to correct this, witnessed a loaves-and-fishes phenomenon where the amount in the measuring cup was apparently unchanged no matter how much I poured out of it.
Kitchen scales have always seemed a bit fussy to me, but FYI many recipes in the eGullet recipe archives are weight-based.
I had heard and this seems to confirm it that Americans by and large don't have scales. Is this actually the case? To me this seems bizarre, like having a kitchen without knives or saucepans but my American friends seem eqaully astonished that I can exist without a clothers dryer so clearly the definition of essential differs from country to country.
Could/do scales have some sort of rough volume/weight conversion button for common ingredients like sugar, flour, salt, etc. so that if your recipe calls for 1 cup of flour (and doesn't list weights). I guess this would mean a lot more buttons (especially for numerous ingredients) as well as establishing what a true cup of flour weighs (ie, how sifted/packed, humidity, etc.) Still I'm sure there are some decent rules of thumb for the 10 or 20 most common ingredients.
Michael, go over to the kitchen outlet at Waterloo--I'm sure they'll have something perfectly fine there for under $50. Anything flat with grams and ounces and a tare feature will do you.
Yeah yeah yeah - but that takes the fun out of online shopping!
For the people asking for weighed recipes, the bbc food website is good and give measurements in both imperial and metric units.
You just type in your ingredients or recipe title into the search box.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food
For really cheap scale, which I find are still perfectly adequate, I recommend IKEA. You can buy both electronic and dial scales there.
People I know (friends, and not in a "friends" manner - I have asthma and can't inhale) buy weed by grams or by ounces. No screwing around with 1/8s and such. Well and a few university friends bought and sold in kilos, but they had lots of hydroponic equipment...
I have a good excuse for not having a scale... I don't bake!
Megan,
The scales you describe have been available for a long time...in scientific equipment catalogs. I use 'em all the time in my lab work (I'm a Toxicologist with the NYC Medical Examiner). Of course, I use them to make something radically different :)