tropit

Most Americans and Canadians have learned to bake using cups, teaspoons and cubes of butter instead of a scale to measure ingredients. I was following a new recipe that offered the measurements in cups as well as in weight. I decided to try the recipe using grams, just to see if there was any difference. I measured out each ingredient using cups, tablespoons, etc and then took the weight of the ingredient to see if it was very far off. Most ingredients were off and some by a lot! I noticed that the store's brands were the most off. For example, a tablespoon of store brand baking powder was only half as much that was indicated by weight. Even store brand butter came in "light" by 3 or 4 tablespoons. A quarter pound cube of butter certainly did not weigh 4 oz. Flour was off too, but the better flour, such as King Arthur's was much closer to the indicated weight. It was an interesting experiment.

thimblebug6000

Although I do have and use a scale often when baking, recipes from years ago, and even some more recent, call for 500 grams of this or that….and that is the size of bag we used to be able to purchase, but now the bag size has diminished to perhaps 375 grams….. ugh! Actually those were the exact changes on our bacon packages, I used to make one package of bacon wrapped stuffing balls and it filled the plate. Ah well….keeping us seniors on our toes! My kidlet doesn’t even notice ….they buy their stuff already made up 😀

zennia

tropit, your experiment sure showed some interesting differences. I know for me being gluten-free a lot of recipes call for grams so I have to use a scale. it sound like we better not use a measuring cup when we should use scales for grams.

Murphy224

I found that when I weighed flour for any recipe, the product was much better. And that my flour measuring skills were not as accurate as they should be!! I use King Arthur flour and know that a cup of it weighs 4.25 oz or 120 grams. My baked goods have turned out much much better since I began to weigh the flour, even if I don't weigh any other ingredients.

Lena1952

It’s strange but I only weigh the ingredients when I’m making bread.

Onebyone

I weight ingredients when baking breads as the recipes I use are in grams. if not in grams then the cup measurements seem to work. I like the digital scale. It is lightweight and thin. I use the food scale a lot.

Snooze2978

My sister llikes to try new recipes and she's gone to using the scale as she says it seems to come out better. If you watch any of the cooking shows like American Test Kitchen or Cook's country, they use weight most times instead of cups and teaspoons. So maybe there is something to using weight these days.

QuiltE

Flour packed vs. sifted can make a huge difference!
Straight out of the bag, it is more compacted, even if it says it is pre-sifted.
Not sifted vs. sifted once, twice or thrice ... changes how much weight is in a cup.
Or perhaps I should say, the weight lessens, as you go through the comparison.

So much shrinkflation has happened, that one needs to keep an eye on the labelling.
It can all look the same, but may have changed ...
... and we mistakenly, just go with the flow and a-s-s-ume! OOPS!!

bkay

Many years ago, I attended chef school at a local community college. All recipes were by weight. Your baked goods, particularly, turn out better measured by weight.

bkay

Onebyone

In the cooking class I went to, we were told that a plastic measuring 1 cup held less then the metal 1 cup . We tested a lot of 1 cup measuring cups. The metal one always held more. It was only the one cup measure. Odd. I always use the metal ones for measuring since then. If you have both check that out. Also it is surprising how many do not know liquid measures need liquid measuring cup not dry measuring cups. For the most part the foods baked/cooked are fine with not precise measures. To give the food the best chance to be excellent then it's best to be precise.