5 ms·

No, and this is a great reminder that any home cook who claims they cook by weight for precision and repeatability is full of it. It turns out that not all eggs

No, and this is a great reminder that any home cook who claims they cook by weight for precision and repeatability is full of it. It turns out that not all eggs are the same, not all flour had the same moisture, not all butter has the same amount of flavor, not all kitchens are at the same temperature. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen someone in a video boast about measuring the flour by weight for their bread, only to add a completely unmeasured amount when flouring the working surface or their hands. And there’s a reason most recipes use values that are straight conversions from volume rounded to a whole number. There’s a reason nobody says “the real trick to this recipe is the extra 10 grams of sugar”. Indeed, food preferences are largely based on our upbringings, so it’s no surprise that American tastes are built on recipes that can be measured in cups, tablespoons, etc.

brigandish 6y ago
You don't weigh your eggs?
jameshart 6y ago
Eggs are consistent enough that they generally contain the same amounts of the relevant chemicals as another, similar sized egg. As a result, you don't generally need to weigh or measure the volume of your egg to achieve consistency, so long as your eggs are consistent. But you do need to use approximately the proportionately correct amounts of the other chemicals in your recipe. And you're just making your life easier if you measure those quantities in terms of mass, because it has all sorts of benefits: 1) You don't need to worry about packing - the same mass of table salt and coarse salt, sifted flour and packed flour, confectioners' sugar and granulated sugar; all will have the same amount of the active substance (but the form factor may of course have other effects on your recipe) 2) you can use a fine grained scale like grams, without having to introduce cumulative error (imagine if you tried to measure out 7/8 cup of flour by measuring 42 teaspoons - your error would be huge) 3) you can add it up across combinations of ingredients (100g of flour + 100g of milk weighs 200g; 1 cup of flour + 1 cup of milk has... who knows how much volume? That was, after all, the point of the original article at the top of this thread). This has huge benefits when adding mixed dry ingredients like mixtures of types of flour and cocoa, or mixed dried fruits, where you need to have a reasonably fixed total mass, but the ratios aren't as important. Just keep adding until you have the right total mass - something you can't do with volume. Measuring volumes is harder, less effective, and more error prone. That would all be the case even if you used a sensible volume measure like milliliters, but it's even worse if you insist on using a volume measure system made of arbitrarily named units like tablespoons and cups where you have to memorize a dozen conversion factors and work in fractions the whole time.
catblast 6y ago
Frankly, garbage. Serious bakers are capable of a lot more consistency than you realize. > It turns out that not all eggs are the same. You can weigh eggs, or more often it's actually sufficient to balance the liquid to offset the variation in eggs -- a lot of baking especially isn't just about taste - but about consistency and proper proportions to get repeatable texture and density. It is also generally speaking quite sufficient to deal with food liquids in volume as well since room temperature differences are controlled close enough such that it doesn't matter. The difference in weight of a cup of water between 20 C and 25 C is negligible. 1 cup of flour on the other hand can vary in actual material by over 20% because of numerous variables from clumping to type of flour. > I don’t know how many times I’ve seen someone in a video boast about measuring the flour by weight for their bread, only to add a completely unmeasured amount when flouring the working surface or their hands. Basically bullshit again because: In most cases, the working surface flour won't amount to even 1% of the final product, however as stated volume vs. weight can make double-digit differences. Your whole "10 gram" of sugar claim is a straw-man. Baking and pastries tends to require a lot more precision then basic cooking to get repeatable edible results. It's the one reason why pre-made cake mixes and Bisquik are so popular, even with professional chefs.
cesaref 6y ago
I'm guessing you don't do much cooking. The vast majority of cooking is done by sight, feel, smell and taste. The key to repeatability is to adjust based on experience. 'Hmm, this doesn't taste right, i think it needs a little more vinegar/sugar/whatever to bring it together'. That's the art in cooking. Now there is science as well, and this tends to come into play with techniques and ingredients which change considerably when cooked, so things like baking, or bread making (there are lots of examples, but these are a good place to start). You'll find plenty of cooks who say they can't make great cakes, and generally it's because they aren't good at measuring. Bread making is a little bit of both. With the starting point you do tend to adjust as you go along. After a first rise when you knock the bread back you get a feel for how the dough is behaving, and add a little more flour (typically) to bring things under control. Yeast is a live ingredient so you get batch to batch variations you need to correct for. I'm not convinced by your argument about America and cups - you'll not find that in American restaurants, and I can't remember Americans complaining about how restaurant food 'just doesn't taste right' or something like that!

brigandish 6y ago

You don't weigh your eggs?

jameshart 6y ago

Eggs are consistent enough that they generally contain the same amounts of the relevant chemicals as another, similar sized egg. As a result, you don't generally need to weigh or measure the volume of your egg to achieve consistency, so long as your eggs are consistent. But you do need to use approximately the proportionately correct amounts of the other chemicals in your recipe. And you're just making your life easier if you measure those quantities in terms of mass, because it has all sorts of benefits: 1) You don't need to worry about packing - the same mass of table salt and coarse salt, sifted flour and packed flour, confectioners' sugar and granulated sugar; all will have the same amount of the active substance (but the form factor may of course have other effects on your recipe) 2) you can use a fine grained scale like grams, without having to introduce cumulative error (imagine if you tried to measure out 7/8 cup of flour by measuring 42 teaspoons - your error would be huge) 3) you can add it up across combinations of ingredients (100g of flour + 100g of milk weighs 200g; 1 cup of flour + 1 cup of milk has... who knows how much volume? That was, after all, the point of the original article at the top of this thread). This has huge benefits when adding mixed dry ingredients like mixtures of types of flour and cocoa, or mixed dried fruits, where you need to have a reasonably fixed total mass, but the ratios aren't as important. Just keep adding until you have the right total mass - something you can't do with volume. Measuring volumes is harder, less effective, and more error prone. That would all be the case even if you used a sensible volume measure like milliliters, but it's even worse if you insist on using a volume measure system made of arbitrarily named units like tablespoons and cups where you have to memorize a dozen conversion factors and work in fractions the whole time.

catblast 6y ago

Frankly, garbage. Serious bakers are capable of a lot more consistency than you realize. > It turns out that not all eggs are the same. You can weigh eggs, or more often it's actually sufficient to balance the liquid to offset the variation in eggs -- a lot of baking especially isn't just about taste - but about consistency and proper proportions to get repeatable texture and density. It is also generally speaking quite sufficient to deal with food liquids in volume as well since room temperature differences are controlled close enough such that it doesn't matter. The difference in weight of a cup of water between 20 C and 25 C is negligible. 1 cup of flour on the other hand can vary in actual material by over 20% because of numerous variables from clumping to type of flour. > I don’t know how many times I’ve seen someone in a video boast about measuring the flour by weight for their bread, only to add a completely unmeasured amount when flouring the working surface or their hands. Basically bullshit again because: In most cases, the working surface flour won't amount to even 1% of the final product, however as stated volume vs. weight can make double-digit differences. Your whole "10 gram" of sugar claim is a straw-man. Baking and pastries tends to require a lot more precision then basic cooking to get repeatable edible results. It's the one reason why pre-made cake mixes and Bisquik are so popular, even with professional chefs.

cesaref 6y ago

I'm guessing you don't do much cooking. The vast majority of cooking is done by sight, feel, smell and taste. The key to repeatability is to adjust based on experience. 'Hmm, this doesn't taste right, i think it needs a little more vinegar/sugar/whatever to bring it together'. That's the art in cooking. Now there is science as well, and this tends to come into play with techniques and ingredients which change considerably when cooked, so things like baking, or bread making (there are lots of examples, but these are a good place to start). You'll find plenty of cooks who say they can't make great cakes, and generally it's because they aren't good at measuring. Bread making is a little bit of both. With the starting point you do tend to adjust as you go along. After a first rise when you knock the bread back you get a feel for how the dough is behaving, and add a little more flour (typically) to bring things under control. Yeast is a live ingredient so you get batch to batch variations you need to correct for. I'm not convinced by your argument about America and cups - you'll not find that in American restaurants, and I can't remember Americans complaining about how restaurant food 'just doesn't taste right' or something like that!