Converting Favorite Recipes from Volume to Weight Measurements

[Bill Klapp]

Listen to these people, Shel. Either use imprecise recipes that call for cups, or use weight. For serious baking, there is NO chance that you will get the best results by measuring. The weather on any given day can destroy your dough, so measuring cups with a potential 25% weight variance can do much worse. Ounces vs. metric is no big deal. There is at least a fixed conversion possibility there...

[weinoo]

Here's a good thread.

[rotuts]

you wont go wrong starting at K.A.F.:

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipe/master-weight-chart.html?utm_source=sli&utm_medium=redirect

they convert to lbs/oz

each book/ site will give slightly different conversions.... which should be consistent w their Rx's ....

if they bothered to check them.

I use KAF but converted them to grams and wrote it down.

if you can get the 'Untimate' bread books: ed 1 and 2 at your lib look them over. big time thread here on that technique.

if you look from site to site you might see the sl difference in vol / weight equivalents.

assume you have a decent scale? BB$B has a ton:

http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/store/search/search.jsp?view=grid&_dyncharset=UTF-8&Keyword=kitchen%20scale

test kitchen like the ones w the pull out read out as its a bit easier to see

but I got my salter before that and have had no problem w it.

[weinoo]

King Arthur uses 4.25 oz. for 1 cup A/P.

Cook's Illustrated uses 5.0 oz. for 1 cup A/P

I use 4.75 oz. for 1 cup A/P

Since it falls approximately in the middle. Measurements are much more important (imo) for pastry baking than they are for bread baking, where you can compensate based upon how the dough feels, once you gain the experience of working with bread doughs.

[Norm Matthews]

Shel-B the chart you referenced looks as good as any for a start but measuring by weight will only give you consistent results, not guaranteed good results. When it comes to making bread dough, I don't measure flour. I add the flour to the mixer until it is the right consistency. That way I can change the basic recipe by adding eggs, fats, or substituting some or part of the liquid for another and still use the right amount of flour by sight and feel. I think that is the best way to go but it takes some experience before you get to that point.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Norm Matthews (log)

[Shel_B]

Shel-B the chart you referenced looks as good as any for a start but measuring by weight will only give you consistent results, not guaranteed good results. When it comes to making bread dough, I don't measure flour. I add the flour to the mixer until it is the right consistency. That way I can change the basic recipe by adding eggs, fats, or substituting some or part of the liquid for another and still use the right amount of flour by sight and feel. I think that is the best way to go but it takes some experience before you get to that point.

Thank you for directly answering my question. All I'm looking for is a reasonable place to start since I have no real experience baking.

One of the breads I'd like to get around to making is brioche. I've collected a number of brioche recipes, including recipes from Rose Levy Beranbaum, Paula Wolfert, Julia Child, and a fellow by the name of Norm Matthews. All the recipes use cup measurements, not weight.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Shel_B (log)

[Shel_B]

you wont go wrong starting at K.A.F.:

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipe/master-weight-chart.html?utm_source=sli&utm_medium=redirect

they convert to lbs/oz

Thanks for the pointer! I was at the KAF site but didn't see that chart. Very helpful. All I need is a place to start that has reasonable conversion info.

I don't have a scale ... yet. There are some threads here about scales, have to reread them.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Shel_B (log)

[Lisa Shock]

Start with weight based formulas. That's what professional bakeries use. Anyone putting out volume-based formulas isn't serious about quality; GIGO.

If you want to invest in a bread baking book, I strongly recommend Ciril Hitz's books. He also has some great youtube videos.

[Shel_B]

Start with weight based formulas. That's what professional bakeries use. Anyone putting out volume-based formulas isn't serious about quality; GIGO.

Unfortunately, just about all the bread recipes I have use cups, not weight, and I'd hate to toss them all out just because they don't use weight. These are recipes I've been collecting since 1967, when I got my very first recipe from a little café in Durango, Colorado.

[rotuts]

Not a problem. just use a 'sample group w the conversion system of your choice', then keep a few notes each time your bake something. by using weight, you've just cancelled out the variabilities of your own 'hand' in the cup-scooping dept.

[gfweb]

King Arthur's book is worthwhile too.

[keychris]

Unfortunately, just about all the bread recipes I have use cups, not weight, and I'd hate to toss them all out just because they don't use weight.

You could just measure out the volume of the ingredients, weigh what they are, make some notes and bake away. Then next time you bake the same recipe, use the weights, changing what needs to be changed depending on how you initial bake went.

[djyee100]

Others have said this, I agree, learn to judge the consistency of bread dough to know it's right. For a lean bread dough (unbleached flour, yeast, salt, water), I look for a firm dough that springs into a rounded shape after it is kneaded. When you touch the surface of the dough with your finger, it is slightly tacky like scotch tape. The dough should not be so moist as to stick like paste to your finger, nor dry and hard from too much flour.

How much breadbaking have you done? I would not recommend starting with brioche, which you mentioned upthread. Brioche is tricky because of the large amt of butter and eggs that it contains. Also, for proper mixing and kneading of this heavy dough, working with a stand mixer is best. Anybody else with ideas about brioche?

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I haven't made brioche in decades but when I did it was a recipe from Cuisinart for the Cuisinart. I'm sure the quantities were in cups, though Cuisinart gives an equivalent of 5 ounces per cup of flour. For what it's worth the brioche from that recipe was really good, and I made this in the 1980's before I got seriously into baking bread. It seemed pretty easy at the time.

I'd make it again but I would have to get my mold retinned. That, or find a glass one.

[JeanneCake]

One of the breads I'd like to get around to making is brioche. I've collected a number of brioche recipes, including recipes from Rose Levy Beranbaum, Paula Wolfert, Julia Child, and a fellow by the name of Norm Matthews. All the recipes use cup measurements, not weight.

RLB always has a chart in her books with ingredients listed by volume, by weight (avoirdupois) and in metric (grams) - perhaps start with her recipe and use her chart for comparison when you bake from the other recipes...

[Lisa Shock]

Start with weight based formulas. That's what professional bakeries use. Anyone putting out volume-based formulas isn't serious about quality; GIGO.

Unfortunately, just about all the bread recipes I have use cups, not weight, and I'd hate to toss them all out just because they don't use weight. These are recipes I've been collecting since 1967, when I got my very first recipe from a little café in Durango, Colorado.

Classic example of the Dunning Kruger effect creating a 'blind leading the blind' situation. The books I referenced are from a bread baker who has won gold medals at recent world-level baking competitions in addition to many national-level competitions. Those competitions are incrementally more difficult to enter (nevermind winning) than they were 20 years ago, because the state of the art has undergone immense improvement.

[Norm Matthews]

Professional bakers don't bake two loaves at a time either. even weight based recipes from one kitchen won't necessarily transfer seamlessly to another.

Edited January 5, 2014 by Norm Matthews (log)

[annabelle]

Lisa, I have certainly found that (Dunning-Kruger Effect) to be the case when teaching my children to cook. Rather than tackle simple tasks, they want to make something with 45 ingredients.

[Lisa Shock]

Professional bakers don't bake two loaves at a time either. even weight based recipes from one kitchen won't necessarily transfer seamlessly to another.

True, but, they (weight based recipes) have a better chance of working than recipes based on volume measurement. We're all working with differences in humidity, altitude, wheat varieties, water hardness, yeast strains, friction factor of our mixer, etc. Experience teaches each of us to know exactly how to get the best possible result from our ingredients and kitchens. Recipes, for those who choose to write them, communicate our experience to others. Volumetric measure of dry ingredients in a recipe lets me know immediately that the author routinely accepts a level of random variation and inaccuracy in the final product which I myself, and most of the civilized world, consider unacceptable.

And, Chef Hitz's books are designed as an introduction to bread baking for home cooks, not professional kitchens. -He does teach professional classes and offer formulas for professional use, just not in those books.

[pbear]

Start with weight based formulas. That's what professional bakeries use. Anyone putting out volume-based formulas isn't serious about quality; GIGO.

Unfortunately, just about all the bread recipes I have use cups, not weight, and I'd hate to toss them all out just because they don't use weight. These are recipes I've been collecting since 1967, when I got my very first recipe from a little café in Durango, Colorado.

Important to know. If you're using recipes based on volume, you generally have no way of knowing how much flour by weight the person writing the recipe was using. This, as you mention yourself, would depend on how they handled the flour when measuring. The only reason to convert such recipes to by-weight is that you find it more convenient to work by weight. It's not going to add any precision. Rather, the converstion charts are intended for going the other direction, i.e., to convert a recipe by weight to one by volume because one doesn't have a scale.

As for the chart linked in the OP, I will mention that I find a cup of bread flour and a cup of all purpose both weigh about 5 oz. That's using the stir-and-scoop method, which is actually pretty consistent. The chart says AP weighs half-an-ounce less per cup, which isn't my experience. I do bread by weight now, but did a lot of tests when converting my old tried-and-true recipes using volume. Of which speaking, the main reason I switched to a scale is that I got tired of counting errors. It's easier and more consistent, but not essential IMHO.

[Lisa Shock]

Here's a good thread.

Scales have been used in kitchens, including American ones, since the invention of the scale, several thousand years ago. I own cookbooks dating back to the early 1700s that use weight based measurement. My mother owns a kitchen scale with date in the 1840s stamped on it. Farmers, tradesmen, professional cooks, and many others used scales in their homes and businesses on a daily basis to buy and sell commodities and wares.

Sometime around 1900, US publishers decided to drop weight based measurement while publishers in the Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Greece, Japan, China, Korea, The Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and many more countries continued to publish weight-based recipes for home and professional use.

The recipes he wants to convert aren't really all that old, they are, however, poorly written by authors who did not take advantage of readily available technology. Would you sous vide meat to done-ness based upon just the feel of the meat compared to the feel of the base of your thumb, without the use of any thermometers? If you found a recipe written telling you to just use touch instead of a thermometer in sous vide would you trust it more than tips from a chef instructor with years of experience using thermometers who tells you to use a thermometer for more accurate results? Would you keep asking questions of the chef about your ongoing inaccurate results using the thumb method after ignoring his advice several times? That would be Dunning-Kruger in action.

[pbear]

Come, now. Of about two dozen variables affecting production of a good loaf of home made bread, precision in measuring the flour is about number twenty-three.

[Albert]

But i think there is not a proper scale that convert the Volume of cup into an exact weight for any of your recipe.But in some case when you have the same weight for a specific volume and the weight remain the same for each measurement.

[pbear]

BTW, to amplify slightly on my prior comment, what I mean by precision is this. My basic bread recipe uses one pound of bread flour (1 lb, exactly). In my observation (using a scale), that works out to about 3 c plus 3 tbsp by the stir-and-scoop method. As everyone here recognizes, though, if one relies solely on the volume method, it's generally not going to hit 1 lb exactly. It's gonna be a bit high or a bit low. I'm saying this variance, while real, affects the final product very little (assuming one is doing stir-and-scoop correctly). That opinion is based on having done bread by volume for many years, before switching to a scale.

[Edward J]

Here's a good thread.

Sometime around 1900, US publishers decided to drop weight based measurement while publishers in the Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Greece, Japan, China, Korea, The Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and many more countries continued to publish weight-based recipes for home and professional use.

Eh... no. Not Canada at least. Take a look at any Canadian non-professional "Cook book", cooking magazine, or "recipie" printed on the back of a food item package, and everything is in volume--except chocolate which is in ounces or 28 gr squares. Butter is still measured in tablespoons or the metric equivilent, as is sticky, messy items like corn syrup, honey, peanut butter, etc.

A point to ponder though.... You buy your flour, sugar, salt, etc by weight, as you do your meat and most produce. Is it practical then, that any professional would do inventory or recipie costing based on volume while purchasing ingredients by weight?