Rose Levy Beranbaum: Weigh to Bake

I consider my greatest contribution to the baking world to be listing weights for all the major ingredients.

By Rose Levy Beranbaum

My cookbook, The Cake Bible, first published in 1988, was the first American cookbook to list weights. Now, the majority of baking books list weights as the primary method of measure, although most publishers seem to think it is more “friendly” to list volume first. Kudos to Bake from Scratch for also listing the weight of egg yolks and whites, which can vary widely.

A cook must constantly taste, prod, evaluate, and adapt to the variation of ingredients. A baker, however, is working with ingredients such as flour, sugar, baking powder, liquid, and butter, which generally are far more consistent. The variance in baking results comes from the way people measure the ingredients even more than from the mixing technique. Using scales eliminates this problem. If flour is measured by volume, it can result in as much as 1.75 times as much as is needed, and you cannot undo the effects of dryness and heavy texture. We bakers are exacting people who delight in submitting ourselves to rules and formulas if it means achieving repeatable perfection. The rewards of this discipline go beyond providing sensory pleasure. There is also a feeling of magic and alchemy that comes from starting with ingredients that don’t remotely resemble the delicious magnificence of the final result.

Any lover of baking adores using scales. Weighing ingredients is not only reassuring but also much faster than measuring by volume and results in far less cleanup. Consider how much easier it is to scoop cocoa or powdered sugar, with the inevitable lumps, into a bowl for weighing, rather than to try to measure out a level cup, lightly spooned. And I wouldn’t dream of trying to figure out how tightly to pack brown sugar into a cup when I can weigh it in a flash. Also, think how much more pleasant it is to weigh a greasy substance like vegetable shortening rather than to smear it into a measuring cup, or to weigh sticky corn syrup or honey. Most scales have the ability to eliminate (tare) the weight of the bowl, also making it possible to add the dry ingredients to the mixing bowl rather than having to use separate bowls for each. This eliminates the need both to sift the fl our or to sift the dry ingredients together.

Another benefit of weighing is the ease of decreasing or increasing recipes. Also, once in a great while, I have completed a batter or dough and suddenly wondered if I remembered to add an ingredient. All I need to do to verify it is to weigh the final batter. If it is less than the total weight of the recipe, my suspicions are confirmed and I can determine which is the missing ingredient. Here are my parameters for converting your favorite recipes to weight: 1 cup sifted bleached cake flour = 100 grams, 1 cup all-purpose fl our lightly spooned into the cup = 121 grams, 1 cup granulated sugar = 200 grams, 1 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed = 217 grams, 1 large egg yolk = 20 grams, 1 large egg white = 30 grams.

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