Weigh, Measure, or Guesstimate?

by Joanne Camas
on 01/26/11 at 05:00 PM









10:02:04 PM on

Baking especially yeast breads weights

Cooking measures and guesstimates

05:26:07 PM on

Measurements for baking; measurements for everything else the first time I make the recipe; guesstimate after that.
Except for pasta; 4 oz. in shells does not measure anything close to 4 oz. in penne, much less in cappellini . . . I put the pasta on a paper plate on my late father-in-law's balance-beam postage scale, which goes in 1/2-ounce increments. I am a dinosaur.

06:59:52 AM on

I guess I am all three- for recipes or ingredients I am familiar with I can estimate a teaspoon or tablespoon. I measure when making something new, and I have a scale which I use for baking or portion control for my husband who is a diabetic.

08:43:19 PM on

I TOTALLY wing it - - unless it is a baked item (bread/pastry/etc.), then measurements are absolute. For American recipes, I will then do standard wet/dry measures, for European recipes, I have a scale.

03:48:52 PM on

Weigh. I avoid using measuring spoons and cups as much as possible just because I don't like having more dishes to wash than necessary!

Weighing is really easy once you get into the habit. Just throw the bowl on the scale and zero it out. Add first ingredient, reset to zero, add second ingredient, set to zero...

Its gotten to the point where I do some cup to weight conversions automatically without reference or a calculator. (i.e. a cup of granulated sugar = 7oz). If I can't get the conversion to work out to an 1/8oz, then I break out the calculator and convert to grams.

12:15:10 PM on

Weights, whenever possible, and in metric.

What's doubly-infuriating is that when measuring volumetrically that the vessel does matter. If a recipe calls for a cup of sugar the quantity will be different if you use a narrow dry measuring cup rather than a wider liquid measuring cup. Recipes are written to use the measuring device appropriate to the ingredient so if you try to get away with using just one you'll get the wrong result. A cup of sugar can mean different things if using a table spoon, a dry measuring cup or a liquid measuring pitcher, but it will always be 200 grams.

Now if only I could meet the marketing genius at Oxo who decided that their food scale should automatically shut off after a short period of time if you're not actively pushing buttons, even if the weight is changing, and if the weight is at all different when you turn it back on it resets the tare. I have to constantly remember to switch between Imperial and metric every minute. Grrr.

10:32:16 AM on

When baking, weights! When cooking, usually cups because it's not necessary to be precise. I don't like having to convert baking recipes that are given in measures to weights though. I find myself preferring baking recipes that are already in weight or converting them if fairly easy.

10:29:09 AM on

I'm an American home baker and I weigh when at all possible - some recipes you just have to go with the cup system. I agree, the inconsistency drives me a little batty, but mostly I bake to have fun so I try not to get too obsessive about those occasional odd results.
I'd love it if all recipes came with weighing measurements instead of volume - I now look for that in cookbooks.

11:17:09 PM on

I'm a home baker, not professional, but a pretty good one. I do not own a scales. I suppose if I tried things like croissants instead of yeast breads and muffins, I might feel differently, but for the years (quite a few) I've been baking, I've never missed the accuracy of weighing. I follow recipes of authors who have tested their recipes ( Marion Cunningham, Cook's Illustrated, Gourmet when it was alive, seldom a women's magazine or newspaper article)and have had excellent results. If I had space, I might purchase one, but there are other tools I'd rather own.

10:55:40 PM on

When baking, weights.
Other cooking, measures as called for in the recipe the first time, by eye and taste after that.
Any production in volume-weights.
The scale is easier and more accurate. Why anyone would prefer cups is beyond me.

07:01:07 PM on

i go to culinary school; weights all the way. especially when baking- we even weigh milk and other liquids. cooking isn't so exact, but we weigh everything that we do measure.

05:23:22 PM on

A little of everything, really.

When I bake, if I'm working out new recipes of my own, or when a recipe is described in terms of weight, or I've converted the recipe to weight, I use weight. I agree that it's the most reliable way of doing things. Otherwise I use volume.

When I'm not baking, all bets are off, but I use actual recipes far less frequently when not baking, too. If it's something where being precise matters, I do prefer weights to volume here, too.

05:05:56 PM on

I'm American and I weigh--aided by 4 years in the UK. Thankfully, recipes giving weights are getting much more common in the US (though I was annoyed by one cookbook that extolled the virtues of the scale in the intro, then failed to give weights for anything!)

In baking, it's usually fairly easy to convert volume measured recipes to weights--I do it all the time, with a very low failure rate. You rarely know whether the recipe writer uses a 4oz spooned-in cup or a 5oz dip and sweep anyway--your weights won't be any more inaccurate than your volume!

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