this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
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Unpopular Opinion

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I'm tired of guessing which country the author is from when they use cup measurement and how densely they put flour in it.

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[–] inconel@lemmy.ca 27 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I wanted to believe my opinion is popular yet recipes I've seen are almost in volume and I don't know why.

Baking is chemistry for sure.

[–] fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 month ago

My total guess is weighing scales used to be expensive / inaccessible for the common home baker and one of the first popular recipe books thus used volume, became wildly popular, and indirectly taught a generation of home bakers that baking recipes are by volume, not weight.

[–] baggins@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 month ago (2 children)

In my opinion every recipe should be in weight unless there's a good reason to put it in volume. The idea of washing half a dozen individual little measuring cups to prepare one recipe is absurd. Slap a bowl on your scale and go to town.

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You mean a separate bowl from the main container, right? So you can remove over-scoops without disturbing the previous ingredients? I'm still trying to get comfortable with my scale. I get frustrated because there's not parts of grams, and it doesn't seem to constantly update, it just jumps from too little to too much.

[–] baggins@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Always 2nd bowl. Having a more sensitive scale helps with it updating faster. You can also tap the scale to try and get it to update.

I use a 0.1g/2kg scale for most things, I also have a 1g/5kg one I never use. I can't find it rn but I also have a 0.01g/100g scale for when smartasses on the internet tell me to weigh a 1/8 tsp of pepper.

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

What does 1/8 tsp of pepper weigh?

[–] baggins@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 month ago

Here you go. It weighs about 0.21g 1/4tsp on black pepper being weighed on a scale, it reads 0.43g

[–] baggins@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

That's a small pinch of pepper. I don't even own a measure that size.

[–] flicker@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

I have a 1/8 teaspoon but the idea is... why? Anything being pinched, I'm not digging out a measuring spoon for.

Measuring by volume is definitely ridiculous. I'm an USAmerican baker.

[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I feel like this is just a remnant of a time where a container with a bunch of lines on it was cheaper than a sufficiently accurate scale. It might just go away over 1-2 more generations.

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Anyone who gets into baking today will quickly learn volumetric measuring doesn't work.

Basic baking you can get away with volumetric (simple breads, for example). Anything beyond that... Well, good luck.

Scales have been cheap for a couple generations now. Digital scales didn't exist until I was an adult, but the cheap spring type did. And those were maybe $5 decades ago. It's more about awareness and knowledge. Cookbooks 50 years ago wouldn't have had weight measurements because people didn't have scales.

[–] Pips@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 month ago

While it's chemistry, there is a bit of an art to it, and you can be off by a bit and still have perfectly good bread.