Scales

[Mike Nolan]

A friend sent me this link. This is preaching to the choir for most of us, but this is a good article on why bakers should use scales.

I actually have six of them at the moment, 2 that measure in 1/10 of a gram increments, 3 that measure in gram increments, one of which will handle up to 33 pounds, and 1 that does milligrams, which is for things other than baking.

See scales article

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[RiversideLen]

I'm a big fan of measuring by weight. However, most recipes are not written that way and not everyone agrees to how much a cup of flour weighs.

[Italiancook]

I have a Mennonite recipe for excellent Butterhorn rolls that would benefit from scaling. I had bought an inexpensive scale for that recipe. When it arrived, I didn't want to dirty a bowl with the dough for weighing, and the scale was too small to hold a blob of dough. I gave the scale to a neighbor for his shop. I spent $72 on the pull-out display from KABC. It's now much less expensive (grumble grumble). The scale would hold a blob of Butterhorn dough for dividing, but I haven't made it around to the recipe yet.

KABC has an excellent blog about how-to use a scale.

[skeptic7]

I have a scale but it doesn't have the accuracy for baking. Its a spring type scale that measures in lbs and ounces. It works for weighing the final weight of dough before I divided up into buns for baking, and making hamburger patties and freezing slices of meat into sandwich portions.
When I was poorer, I didn't think a scale was worth the money. A scale used to be so much more expensive than measuring cups and spoons. Thats what used to annoy me about articles that claimed a scale was absolutely "essential". The scale mentioned above was a present. I sift my flour and measure carefully and am willing to adjust recipes by adding water or flour by the spoonful as necessary, and take notes for future attempts. A scale isn't going to compensate for dry atmosphere.
Do they still make electric scales that can be plugged into the wall? I get tired of buying batteries for everything.

[Mike Nolan]

Bigger scales will have a power plug where you can plug in a power adapter. Sometimes the adapter is included on Amazon, sometimes it isn't.

On a MyWeigh KD-8000 if you have an AC adapter, it supposedly doesn't time out, you have to turn it off.

We don't use an AC adapter because we move our scales around too much and a battery lasts us about a year.

I always use 4 1/4 ounces as the weight of a cup of flour, as does King Arthur, though the USDA uses a higher number, 127.0478 grams or 4.4812 ounces. If a new recipe I'm trying that gives flour in volume measurements seems a little too soupy, I can add a little more flour to stiffen it up, but it seems just as likely to me to have to add a little more liquid to get a good dough ball to form.

[BakerAunt]

I bought a fairly inexpensive Saltar scale at Ross over ten years ago. I think that I paid less than $20 for it, and it has been a workhorse. It has a small footprint and runs on two lithium batteries. I keep it in a drawer, in the cardboard outline in which it was nestled. I pull it out as needed. I like that I can toggle back and forth between metric and English weights with a button on the top. There is not a lot of warning when the batteries are low, and it will turn off unexpectedly in that case, as it did today while I was measuring flour for buns. Thus, I keep back-up batteries on hand. I've converted some of my bread recipes to grams, so that I do not have to use measuring cups. I also use it for dividing dough.

I, briefly, had a more expensive scale that my husband bought at King Arthur for my birthday, when I told him I wanted it. That scale had a larger pad for weighing dough. However, the toggle to go from metric to English was on the BACK of the scale, so I could not toggle. The batteries that came with it degenerated quickly, leaked, and ruined the scale. I swore off the expensive stuff at that point and went back to my Saltar. If I need to weigh something bigger than the pad, I put a ring I have that I use when I want to keep a mixing bowl from sliding around with the hand mixer, or I want to slant a bowl slightly to let a small amount of remaining batter come together. I put the ring on the mixer, then a plate or bowl, and put the larger stuff to be weighed inside it.

I am, like Sceptic, getting tired of buying batteries, which I seem to be doing every six months or so. KABC has a large scale that can be battery or plug in, but it would take a lot of room on the counter.

I really like scales for weighing sour cream or yogurt or peanut butter. These products include gram listings, so I work out the weight for the volume measurement. I HATE cleaning this stuff out of measuring cups. It's also handy for weighing chocolate chips and nuts if you are watching saturated fat. I even weigh the nuts I plan to eat for a snack.

Yes, scales are great.

[Joan Simpson]

I bought a scale but I don't use it much,seems like more trouble to me.

[Mike Nolan]

It's a rare day when we don't use it several times here, even if I'm not baking. My wife uses it to help her gauge her carb intake. (We have concluded that a good rule of thumb is that 50% of most breads are carbs, so 40 grams of bread is 20 grams of carbs.)

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