Why You Need to Get a Kitchen Scale Today
If You Don't Already Have One
Growing up, I always used measuring cups to bake, and to be honest, I never had a problem with my recipes. Even my grandma, who taught me how bake, used measuring cups for some of her baking projects. My mom, who is an interior designer and lives and breathes for pretty looking objects, and is a good baker herself, has a collection of measuring cups of all colors, shapes, and forms. But, the thing all three of us have in common is that we are perfectionists and meticulous which translates into careful and precise measuring. This is not the case for most people, and, even though your bakes might turn out fine most of the time, the only thing you can do to get consistent results and have complete control of your goods is to measure them with a scale, IN GRAMS (yes, you read exactly right, there is no place in my kitchen for ounces or pounds).
Accuracy When Measuring is Crucial for a Good Bake
So, why is it that you should ditch your measuring cups and convert to a kitchen scale? It is almost like asking yourself, "why should I eat a soup with a spoon instead of a fork?" It so happens that when measuring with cups, your ingredients can fall into the containers in different ways every time (specially flour) leaving pockets of air that should be filled with whatever you are measuring. This means that, every time you bake, you are adding different amounts of ingredients which leads to many different types of problems:
​
-
Baking is a science. The ingredients in your recipe interact with one another and create chemical reactions that make your cakes, cookies, breads, etc., look, feel, and taste how they are supposed to. If you add the wrong quantity of any ingredient, your recipe might loose a key reaction that will result in a failed batch.
-
Ingredients have more complex purposes than just, say, sugar making your cake sweeter. For example, sugar also contributes to browning and texture (this is specially true for cookies and biscuits), so if you add the wrong amount it will not only have the wrong consistency but it can also throw you off when deciding wether or not your cookies are ready to be taken out of the oven.
If you use a kitchen scale, you will save yourself all of these chemical-reaction-inaccuracy headaches​ because every time you measure 150g of flour, you WILL get 150g of flour.
You Are in Complete Control
When you start becoming more comfortable with your skills, you might want to make your cookies more crumbly, or crunchier, or gooey-er, and you are going to want to make slight modifications to some recipes. When you are measuring in cups, modifying recipes, in my opinion, is a little bit more complicated. If you are working with grams you just have to add or subtract grams to grams and will be less likely to get lost in the math behind these simple operations. In the same way, it will also be easier to scale up or down your recipe.
There Are Different Cup Volumes
Yes you read that right. There are, indeed, different measures for cups all around the world. Even in the USA, where cups are naïvely commonly used in kitchens, not everyone is using the same volume. Yes, outrageous, scandalous even. This means that the person who developed the recipe you're baking might use different volume cups than the ones you have, and therefore, you will always wonder why your cookies never really turned out like the picture. For example, in Alison Roman's kitchen, 1 cup equals to 145 g, but over at New York Time's Cooking it equals to 128 g. You can check this discrepancy out in NYT Cooking recipe for Alison Roman's "The Cookies." (which are exquisite by the way) Thankfully, NYT Cooking does point it out in the recipe notes, but that is the only time I have seen that happen (the pointing out, that is). So, to spare this type of confusion, use a scale and measure in grams.
Less Mess, Less Cleaning
No matter how tidy you are, there will always be some cleaning up to do when you are baking. However, ever since I started using a kitchen scale and ditched the measuring cups, I noticed a very rapid decrease of mess in my kitchen. When you use measuring cups, you are more likely to get flour on your counter, on the floor, and on yourself. You have to scoop your flour into your cup and then you have to level it. If you are taking the flour straight from the bag, you know what mess I'm talking about, if your flour jar/container does not have a wide enough mouth, you also know what I'm talking about. Then, on top of having to clean your bowls, spatulas, and mixer attachments, you will also have to clean your measuring cups. I don't know about you, but I find it extremely annoying and uncomfortable to clean measuring cups.
​
When you use a kitchen scale, none of this will happen. You can just carefully pour your flour, sugar, liquids, etc., into your bowl and use the "tear" function to reset your scale and add the next ingredient. No annoying flour spillage, and no extra cleaning of useless utensils.
Measuring Liquids
Last but certainly not least, measuring liquids should NEVER be done in anything other than a scale, regardless if you are using ml or pints (whatever that is). Liquid measuring jugs/cups are as inaccurate as using Google Translate to do your French homework. If you did not already know, 1 g is equal to 1 ml, so you can perfectly measure your liquids in a scale using grams. However, some scales will have a ml option should you want to measure in ml instead of grams (but, like I said, its the same thing).
There you have it. Measuring cups are so yesterday. Please do yourself a favor and switch to a kitchen scale as soon as possible.
Kitchen scales do not have to be huge and bulky. They also inexpensive. Here are some that I like: