My aunt's bread rule I ignored for years cost me a whole Sunday

My aunt, who bakes bread for the farmers market in Portland, kept telling me to use a kitchen scale instead of measuring cups. I thought my cup method was fine. After 3 failed loaves in one day, I finally bought a $12 scale off Amazon. First batch came out perfect, like restaurant quality. She was right the whole time. Anyone else stubborn about measuring and finally switched?

3 comments

3 Comments

wells.olivia1mo ago

So like, what was the actual breaking point for you? Was it the third failed loaf that finally got you, or did you have a moment during mixing when you just knew the cup method was screwing you? Because I've been there with pastry dough where I kept adding flour to fix the texture and ended up with a brick. Did you weigh your water too or just the flour? That's been the game changer for me, realizing that even slight water weight variations from humidity can throw off the whole hydration ratio.

brian_smith61mo ago

So my buddy Dave, he's a pretty decent home baker, he had this exact same crisis with bagels. He's making these dense little rocks for weeks, following this famous recipe from a book. He was scooping flour like a maniac, leveling it off with a knife, the whole thing. Then one day he's over at my place and I'm just casually dumping flour into a bowl on a scale. He had this moment where he just stood there staring at my scale for like ten seconds. He went home, ordered a fifty dollar scale that night, weighed everything including his water for the first time ever. First batch came out perfect, he texted me a photo of the crumb at like 11pm, said he almost cried because he finally understood what "shaggy dough" actually looked like instead of a dry, cracked mess.

craig.mila1mo ago

Oh man, the water weight thing is so real and nobody talks about it enough. Your mileage may vary but I've had days where the exact same flour and water amounts gave me totally different dough feel just because it was rainy out. It's honestly kind of wild that we trust cup measurements at all for something so finicky.