It shouldn’t matter how I got a dessert on the plate. Mistakes should be embraced as a learning experience and not apologized for (as long as it tastes delicious). We don’t need a business mindset in the kitchen. And who needs perfection if something tastes fabulous? (I sure don’t.) But...
I want folks to get baking, but one thing I’ve seen repeatedly is people failing at a recipe and then giving up. Sticking with a scale for anything more than a Tablespoon reduces the error rate and increases the ease, speed, and effort. No more washing out measuring cups. (Fewer dishes could be the sole reason to only measure with weights.) No more worrying if you need to sift the flour or pack the brown sugar. No more wondering if you should measure the strawberries before or after chopping. Using a scale sets me free to be more creative. I can tweak a recipe without having to divide fractions. What if this recipe needs ten percent more cocoa powder?
As a completely untrained, unprofessional home baker, the scale was a way for me to show my queerness in the kitchen. I chose to measure things differently. In a way that most of my family didn’t comprehend and still refuse to adopt. I’ve been told that “normal people” use cups. I’ve been told, “It’s America, use cups.” So many people have said that they use cups for no reason except nostalgia. “That’s how mom/grandma baked.” Cups are how their family baked, so it must be the best way. Well, my scale is part of my chosen family.
And like my queerness, I’m absolutely confident in my scale, and it’s the only way I want to measure ingredients.
And that's the point of what I am saying, my friend. Do what works best for you, don't let someone else tell you otherwise. If you find confidence and success with a scale, that's fantastic. But, we can't insist that it's the only way - especially when home bakers (not food professionals) are merely striving to bake for joy and serve someone something delicious and enjoyable. And, like you that finds a scale help embrace your queerness (which, I absolutely love that you brought to this conversation here), I find the scale (or the pressure of only using a scale) as an oppressive tool used against me as being a queer chef. Forcing the scale triggers toxic men who berated me endlessly. Going against that, using both methods is a form of my resistance and process of finding queer joy. So, it looks like we're saying the same thing, just in different ways. Which brings me back to the point of this essay's message: I don't care how you get there, as long as you get there.
Exactly. (And thank you!) It’s a fascinating that stiflingly traditional home kitchens and toxic professional kitchens can give us such different perspectives. [Insert heart emoji here.]
Instagram and Pinterest have given us an often unreachable standard of “perfect”. If achieved, gives folks a false sense of mastery, IMO.
I’m not much of a recipe person myself bc I think we should all work within our abilities and our resources. I appreciate all the knowledge that exists on the internet tho so I can take what’s useful and leave the rest. And yes, tools are only as good as how we use them.
Exactly! It's fantastic that we have the capability to access so much knowledge in the world of baking. But when the message is repeatedly that this is the only way to properly bake then we contribute to an increase in fear, kitchen anxiety, and minimize the creativity and pride baking brings. We can have both methods, respect and enjoy how people move in the kitchen, and be happy with the end product versus cherry picking how it was made.
I really enjoyed this article. At the same time, my European perspective on weighing is a bit different, because it's just what folks do, so it's not elitist. Metric system thinking. I grew up using cups, so I still use them for American recipes, but I weigh when I'm using European recipes. That said, the best home cooks I know here in Austria just eye it up, and I know one star chef, who forced his apprentices to learn to do that with basic recipes. I like how you balance your approach, depending on recipes.
Thank you! I appreciate your kind and thoughtful perspective and contribution to this conversation. My point really comes down to the language we use. The words 'must' and 'only', to use a scale, is when it becomes elitist, not the scale itself. But the scale has become the tool that has inflicted so much shame and anxiety in home kitchens, especially in the states. The takeaway is if we want the scale to be used more, then set the reader up for success. Educate on how to use the scale. Change language to encourage adopting a scale. But really, use both or just one or the other. It's the home cook's preference. Like you said, and I truly enjoyed, balance.
I switched to metric when writing books. Like you, I’m competent in both volume and metric but I sure love that I have less dishes to wash with metric!
It challenged me when writing Potluck Desserts to include metric since it celebrates nostalgic homey recipes, but I ended up including them. Meet the readers where they are and support what they know, and at the same time educate something new and encourage them decide what works best for them.
As for dishes, I'm one of those people who find washing dishes (and laundry) therapeutic.
I LOVE a clean kitchen, too, but teaching multi-day in-person Pie Camps, where I also feed students, makes A LOT of dishes and that Zen place can be a little hard to find. 🤪
Remind me sometime to tell you about the day the copy edits came back and the copy editor had changed a lot of my carefully calculated gram measurements!
I’m with you. As a home baker with a background in science, I actually am very hybrid in methodology myself. I do have a scale and use it, but for most rustic desserts like cookies and cakes, I do feel more comfortable using volume measurements just because it’s how i learned how to bake (also something I feel like no one talks about for weight measurement is that if you overpour it can be a beast to scoop out the excess if you just haphazardly measured things on top of each other, especially if you’re talking about small amounts - invariably I scoop out a slightly mixed version of things trying to get back to the correct weight and then worry I took out too much of the other accidentally removed ingredients! This actually drives me nuts but I never learn to weigh them in nice little piles). I have enough experience to know how things are supposed to look and feel, and I agree that for a newbie who doesn’t, taking away possible points of error by weighing can help. But also I feel that baking is a practice, and I’ve learned how to bake through all of my less than perfect iterations. Maybe there’s just too much fear of failure in general in our culture that feeds into this conversation too (for instance I have never attempted to make genoise cake after the first failure lol even though I’ve made plenty of chiffon cakes successfully since. The trauma of flour lumps in the cake scarred me). I don’t know if I have a point haha. But I feel like many recipes in baking actually have more wiggle room than advertised so if you are consistent in how you measure volume, it usually turns out fine - the real issue is that the average starting person may not have the intuition or knowledge to know where they can mess up and how to assess a batter along the way, so weight could help in that way for some people. Or it’s a bigger issue that they swap ingredients or use expired leaveners and dead yeast etc and roll with it and then wonder why it didn’t work.
Than you for sharing this! I agree, there has been too much emphasis on the tool being the solution versus the education and knowledge transferred. It’s ok if you use a scale, or volume measurements, or hybrid methods - but do you know why you’re using that method? This is where we fail in recipe development, we’re not offering the why enough and we’re not disclosing why it works for the person who wrote the recipe.
It’s so hard! How do you teach all the basic knowledge in one recipe if you’re trying to teach to an audience that might have never baked anything in the past? It becomes very long. Also in the instant culture we have, everyone wants to be like in The Matrix where you get plugged in and learn the skill instantly 😂 I think the job of the recipe developer is so challenging how to write enough detail to anticipate mistakes but not scare people away by the length. Also ultimately I feel like there’s room for recipe developers to express their preferences and maybe the audience who likes that style too will gravitate to them? Not all recipe developers need to pander to everyone!
This is a fantastic point made! I can only speak for myself, but as recipe developer I approach each recipe with the question "what do I want the reader to takeaway from this?" It could be an introduction to a new combo of flavors, using an ingredient not typically considered in baking, a new method or technique, or simply the foundations of baking, and so on. If I start to see a recipe have more than 2 of these being addressed then I know the recipe is too complicated and I can't effectively educate or maintain the reader's attention. The addiction to master a skill instantly is troubling, we need to give ourselves and others more grace to explore and navigate in the kitchen and find themselves. I think successful recipe developers are those that truly know themselves and are not in the business for vanity. They have a certain style, then never waver from it. They build trust with their readers and are consistent in telling their POV.
I disagree with most of what you've said here but everyone is free to use whatever measuring system they want. I don't think it's elitist to say, however, that one system is better than the other. There may be many ways to do something, but some ways are just better than others.
I prefer weight for everything, and specifically metric. It just makes my life easier in the moment and in the future if I want to experiment. It's easier to adjust recipes in the metric system. Good luck adding 10% more of this or that when using cups.
To add insult to injury, one tablespoon, for example, is not the same the world over! While an American tablespoon is 15ml and 3 teaspoons, an Australian one 20ml and 4 teaspoons. Meanwhile, 15ml is 15ml everywhere. Or better yet, 15 grams if we're talking water. I concede that when measuring very small amounts, such as yeast or spices in a home kitchen, teaspoons are easier to use if you don't have a small jeweler-type scale.
That said, when I write recipes for others, I reluctantly use cups because my target audience is mostly Americans and that's what they are used to. But I also think that is part of the problem, and I'm part of the problem. Doing things the way we do them because we've always done them that way is not a good reason not to improve and do things in ways that are easier. Why are we holding on to a system that is not actually the easiest way to measure ingredients? And yes, by feeding the universe more of these cups recipes, we continue to perpetuate the cycle.
The same goes for absurd measurements like miles, feet, and yards.
And the volume vs weight debate doesn't have to a US customary vs metric debate. We don't' have to push metric to make the conversion. Weighing in ounces is still better than using volume. That pesky cup of flour or packed brown sugar won't vary so wildly anymore!
One thing from your piece that perplexed me is the part where you say that flours will weigh differently. I don't know what you mean, but 500 grams of flour is 500 grams of flour whether it's King Arthur, Central Milling, Pillsbury, or whatever.
I also think that a lot of the reasons you gave against scales are kind of infantilizing and assume people are not very bright. People learn to use new tools all of the time, why would something as simple as a scale be a problem?
I appreciate disagreements. I don't appreciate nor welcome implying or assuming I don't think people are bright.
You make good points, some I don't agree with, but they are strong. But, reading your comment does nothing more than reiterate the reason I said what I said. I'm not trying trying to eliminate a way people cook and bake because another method is easier. I want them to feel that their way is okay to use and shouldn't be ashamed to use it.
It's prefence, it's a choice.
Continue weighing, that's your preference and you found it helpful for you. I will continue to use both, as I said, because I found success using both. And I will continue to support and embrace those who choose not to use a scale. I won't change their minds, but if they choose to try a different method I'll have that option for them. But it's not a requirement.
Interesting article but much of it I disagree with. Your points for not using a scale, like it might switch from ounces to grams, has to do with the cook, not the scale or the system.
So when you’re making cookies for your kids and you say who needs thatdegree of precision It’s true to a certain extent but there’s another factor you haven’t mentioned. Let’s say you’re making cookies for your kids. So you measure out a cup of this and a cup of that and tablespoons of this and tablespoons of that and half a cup of your liquid your eggs and so on. Take a look at your countertop after you do all that and it’s a mess with lots of messy cups and tablespoons.
Whereas: if you put your mixing bowl on a scale, and then you add your grams of flour and your grams of sugar and your grams of milk and whatever else – obviously after each ingredient taking the mixing bowl weight back to zero – and what you have is a no mess precisely mixed batter for cookies.
And here’s another thing:
Let’s say you make something delicious and you want to make it again and you take a look at the recipe. Ideally, it would be great to really understand that recipe so that you can make it again on your own without the recipe and possibly make some variations. Our minds think in metric and when you look at a recipe measured in grams you can get a better feel for it and say “oh that ingredient is double the other ingredient and then that third ingredient I’m adding a third of the first one and you start to see the ratio between these elements. But when we’re talking about 1/3 cup and 2 tablespoons and so forth it’s hard to get the relationship between ingredients in your head. Of course you can do it, but we think metric so another reason for the beloved scale.
Everything you just mentioned is preference based. But, I appreciate you taking the time to share and provide your side of the argument.
Why does a messy kitchen matter? When someone serves you a dessert they made, do you ask to see their kitchen to determine whether what you're about to consume was made properly? I appreciate you taking the time to provide your POV, but this is precisely why I wrote this - we should not be placing these unrealistic benchmarks on people. I don't care if you use a scale or splatter your kitchen and pile dishes. I care that you got into the kitchen and made something you're proud of.
Your point about the problem being the cook not the scale/system. I've seen plenty of recommendations saying to use a scale without any guidance or education surrounding it. We can't assume every single person knows how to use a scale (or any tool they are not familiar with).
And, about people think metric. I can confidently tell you that I do not think that way and I'm sure there are plenty of other people who think differently too.
It shouldn’t matter how I got a dessert on the plate. Mistakes should be embraced as a learning experience and not apologized for (as long as it tastes delicious). We don’t need a business mindset in the kitchen. And who needs perfection if something tastes fabulous? (I sure don’t.) But...
I want folks to get baking, but one thing I’ve seen repeatedly is people failing at a recipe and then giving up. Sticking with a scale for anything more than a Tablespoon reduces the error rate and increases the ease, speed, and effort. No more washing out measuring cups. (Fewer dishes could be the sole reason to only measure with weights.) No more worrying if you need to sift the flour or pack the brown sugar. No more wondering if you should measure the strawberries before or after chopping. Using a scale sets me free to be more creative. I can tweak a recipe without having to divide fractions. What if this recipe needs ten percent more cocoa powder?
As a completely untrained, unprofessional home baker, the scale was a way for me to show my queerness in the kitchen. I chose to measure things differently. In a way that most of my family didn’t comprehend and still refuse to adopt. I’ve been told that “normal people” use cups. I’ve been told, “It’s America, use cups.” So many people have said that they use cups for no reason except nostalgia. “That’s how mom/grandma baked.” Cups are how their family baked, so it must be the best way. Well, my scale is part of my chosen family.
And like my queerness, I’m absolutely confident in my scale, and it’s the only way I want to measure ingredients.
And that's the point of what I am saying, my friend. Do what works best for you, don't let someone else tell you otherwise. If you find confidence and success with a scale, that's fantastic. But, we can't insist that it's the only way - especially when home bakers (not food professionals) are merely striving to bake for joy and serve someone something delicious and enjoyable. And, like you that finds a scale help embrace your queerness (which, I absolutely love that you brought to this conversation here), I find the scale (or the pressure of only using a scale) as an oppressive tool used against me as being a queer chef. Forcing the scale triggers toxic men who berated me endlessly. Going against that, using both methods is a form of my resistance and process of finding queer joy. So, it looks like we're saying the same thing, just in different ways. Which brings me back to the point of this essay's message: I don't care how you get there, as long as you get there.
Exactly. (And thank you!) It’s a fascinating that stiflingly traditional home kitchens and toxic professional kitchens can give us such different perspectives. [Insert heart emoji here.]
Instagram and Pinterest have given us an often unreachable standard of “perfect”. If achieved, gives folks a false sense of mastery, IMO.
I’m not much of a recipe person myself bc I think we should all work within our abilities and our resources. I appreciate all the knowledge that exists on the internet tho so I can take what’s useful and leave the rest. And yes, tools are only as good as how we use them.
Exactly! It's fantastic that we have the capability to access so much knowledge in the world of baking. But when the message is repeatedly that this is the only way to properly bake then we contribute to an increase in fear, kitchen anxiety, and minimize the creativity and pride baking brings. We can have both methods, respect and enjoy how people move in the kitchen, and be happy with the end product versus cherry picking how it was made.
Can’t wait to see what sort of 🔥 this ignites in people’s opinions! ❤️❤️❤️
I'm ready for it 🧯😘
You better be ready.
I really enjoyed this article. At the same time, my European perspective on weighing is a bit different, because it's just what folks do, so it's not elitist. Metric system thinking. I grew up using cups, so I still use them for American recipes, but I weigh when I'm using European recipes. That said, the best home cooks I know here in Austria just eye it up, and I know one star chef, who forced his apprentices to learn to do that with basic recipes. I like how you balance your approach, depending on recipes.
Thank you! I appreciate your kind and thoughtful perspective and contribution to this conversation. My point really comes down to the language we use. The words 'must' and 'only', to use a scale, is when it becomes elitist, not the scale itself. But the scale has become the tool that has inflicted so much shame and anxiety in home kitchens, especially in the states. The takeaway is if we want the scale to be used more, then set the reader up for success. Educate on how to use the scale. Change language to encourage adopting a scale. But really, use both or just one or the other. It's the home cook's preference. Like you said, and I truly enjoyed, balance.
I switched to metric when writing books. Like you, I’m competent in both volume and metric but I sure love that I have less dishes to wash with metric!
It challenged me when writing Potluck Desserts to include metric since it celebrates nostalgic homey recipes, but I ended up including them. Meet the readers where they are and support what they know, and at the same time educate something new and encourage them decide what works best for them.
As for dishes, I'm one of those people who find washing dishes (and laundry) therapeutic.
I LOVE a clean kitchen, too, but teaching multi-day in-person Pie Camps, where I also feed students, makes A LOT of dishes and that Zen place can be a little hard to find. 🤪
I absolutely respect that! I'm sure I have a limit too 🤣
Remind me sometime to tell you about the day the copy edits came back and the copy editor had changed a lot of my carefully calculated gram measurements!
This is panic-inducing! Yes, I would love to hear about this sometime ❤️
Less perfection, more playing 👏👏👏
I’m with you. As a home baker with a background in science, I actually am very hybrid in methodology myself. I do have a scale and use it, but for most rustic desserts like cookies and cakes, I do feel more comfortable using volume measurements just because it’s how i learned how to bake (also something I feel like no one talks about for weight measurement is that if you overpour it can be a beast to scoop out the excess if you just haphazardly measured things on top of each other, especially if you’re talking about small amounts - invariably I scoop out a slightly mixed version of things trying to get back to the correct weight and then worry I took out too much of the other accidentally removed ingredients! This actually drives me nuts but I never learn to weigh them in nice little piles). I have enough experience to know how things are supposed to look and feel, and I agree that for a newbie who doesn’t, taking away possible points of error by weighing can help. But also I feel that baking is a practice, and I’ve learned how to bake through all of my less than perfect iterations. Maybe there’s just too much fear of failure in general in our culture that feeds into this conversation too (for instance I have never attempted to make genoise cake after the first failure lol even though I’ve made plenty of chiffon cakes successfully since. The trauma of flour lumps in the cake scarred me). I don’t know if I have a point haha. But I feel like many recipes in baking actually have more wiggle room than advertised so if you are consistent in how you measure volume, it usually turns out fine - the real issue is that the average starting person may not have the intuition or knowledge to know where they can mess up and how to assess a batter along the way, so weight could help in that way for some people. Or it’s a bigger issue that they swap ingredients or use expired leaveners and dead yeast etc and roll with it and then wonder why it didn’t work.
Than you for sharing this! I agree, there has been too much emphasis on the tool being the solution versus the education and knowledge transferred. It’s ok if you use a scale, or volume measurements, or hybrid methods - but do you know why you’re using that method? This is where we fail in recipe development, we’re not offering the why enough and we’re not disclosing why it works for the person who wrote the recipe.
It’s so hard! How do you teach all the basic knowledge in one recipe if you’re trying to teach to an audience that might have never baked anything in the past? It becomes very long. Also in the instant culture we have, everyone wants to be like in The Matrix where you get plugged in and learn the skill instantly 😂 I think the job of the recipe developer is so challenging how to write enough detail to anticipate mistakes but not scare people away by the length. Also ultimately I feel like there’s room for recipe developers to express their preferences and maybe the audience who likes that style too will gravitate to them? Not all recipe developers need to pander to everyone!
This is a fantastic point made! I can only speak for myself, but as recipe developer I approach each recipe with the question "what do I want the reader to takeaway from this?" It could be an introduction to a new combo of flavors, using an ingredient not typically considered in baking, a new method or technique, or simply the foundations of baking, and so on. If I start to see a recipe have more than 2 of these being addressed then I know the recipe is too complicated and I can't effectively educate or maintain the reader's attention. The addiction to master a skill instantly is troubling, we need to give ourselves and others more grace to explore and navigate in the kitchen and find themselves. I think successful recipe developers are those that truly know themselves and are not in the business for vanity. They have a certain style, then never waver from it. They build trust with their readers and are consistent in telling their POV.
I disagree with most of what you've said here but everyone is free to use whatever measuring system they want. I don't think it's elitist to say, however, that one system is better than the other. There may be many ways to do something, but some ways are just better than others.
I prefer weight for everything, and specifically metric. It just makes my life easier in the moment and in the future if I want to experiment. It's easier to adjust recipes in the metric system. Good luck adding 10% more of this or that when using cups.
To add insult to injury, one tablespoon, for example, is not the same the world over! While an American tablespoon is 15ml and 3 teaspoons, an Australian one 20ml and 4 teaspoons. Meanwhile, 15ml is 15ml everywhere. Or better yet, 15 grams if we're talking water. I concede that when measuring very small amounts, such as yeast or spices in a home kitchen, teaspoons are easier to use if you don't have a small jeweler-type scale.
That said, when I write recipes for others, I reluctantly use cups because my target audience is mostly Americans and that's what they are used to. But I also think that is part of the problem, and I'm part of the problem. Doing things the way we do them because we've always done them that way is not a good reason not to improve and do things in ways that are easier. Why are we holding on to a system that is not actually the easiest way to measure ingredients? And yes, by feeding the universe more of these cups recipes, we continue to perpetuate the cycle.
The same goes for absurd measurements like miles, feet, and yards.
And the volume vs weight debate doesn't have to a US customary vs metric debate. We don't' have to push metric to make the conversion. Weighing in ounces is still better than using volume. That pesky cup of flour or packed brown sugar won't vary so wildly anymore!
One thing from your piece that perplexed me is the part where you say that flours will weigh differently. I don't know what you mean, but 500 grams of flour is 500 grams of flour whether it's King Arthur, Central Milling, Pillsbury, or whatever.
I also think that a lot of the reasons you gave against scales are kind of infantilizing and assume people are not very bright. People learn to use new tools all of the time, why would something as simple as a scale be a problem?
I appreciate disagreements. I don't appreciate nor welcome implying or assuming I don't think people are bright.
You make good points, some I don't agree with, but they are strong. But, reading your comment does nothing more than reiterate the reason I said what I said. I'm not trying trying to eliminate a way people cook and bake because another method is easier. I want them to feel that their way is okay to use and shouldn't be ashamed to use it.
It's prefence, it's a choice.
Continue weighing, that's your preference and you found it helpful for you. I will continue to use both, as I said, because I found success using both. And I will continue to support and embrace those who choose not to use a scale. I won't change their minds, but if they choose to try a different method I'll have that option for them. But it's not a requirement.
Interesting article but much of it I disagree with. Your points for not using a scale, like it might switch from ounces to grams, has to do with the cook, not the scale or the system.
So when you’re making cookies for your kids and you say who needs thatdegree of precision It’s true to a certain extent but there’s another factor you haven’t mentioned. Let’s say you’re making cookies for your kids. So you measure out a cup of this and a cup of that and tablespoons of this and tablespoons of that and half a cup of your liquid your eggs and so on. Take a look at your countertop after you do all that and it’s a mess with lots of messy cups and tablespoons.
Whereas: if you put your mixing bowl on a scale, and then you add your grams of flour and your grams of sugar and your grams of milk and whatever else – obviously after each ingredient taking the mixing bowl weight back to zero – and what you have is a no mess precisely mixed batter for cookies.
And here’s another thing:
Let’s say you make something delicious and you want to make it again and you take a look at the recipe. Ideally, it would be great to really understand that recipe so that you can make it again on your own without the recipe and possibly make some variations. Our minds think in metric and when you look at a recipe measured in grams you can get a better feel for it and say “oh that ingredient is double the other ingredient and then that third ingredient I’m adding a third of the first one and you start to see the ratio between these elements. But when we’re talking about 1/3 cup and 2 tablespoons and so forth it’s hard to get the relationship between ingredients in your head. Of course you can do it, but we think metric so another reason for the beloved scale.
Everything you just mentioned is preference based. But, I appreciate you taking the time to share and provide your side of the argument.
Why does a messy kitchen matter? When someone serves you a dessert they made, do you ask to see their kitchen to determine whether what you're about to consume was made properly? I appreciate you taking the time to provide your POV, but this is precisely why I wrote this - we should not be placing these unrealistic benchmarks on people. I don't care if you use a scale or splatter your kitchen and pile dishes. I care that you got into the kitchen and made something you're proud of.
Your point about the problem being the cook not the scale/system. I've seen plenty of recommendations saying to use a scale without any guidance or education surrounding it. We can't assume every single person knows how to use a scale (or any tool they are not familiar with).
And, about people think metric. I can confidently tell you that I do not think that way and I'm sure there are plenty of other people who think differently too.