One revolution I have realized in baking is the recent trend to start talking about weight and not volume in recipes for certain dry ingredients like flour. Three cups of fluffy sifted flour is a lot less flour than three cups of densely packed flour. Same with brown sugar, or wondering if you need a “flat teaspoon” vs. a “heaping teaspoon” of something.
Yep, only liquids should be measured in volume, since liquids do not compress
no thank you give me the measurement in weight so i can have a digital read on it and not have to use my disgusting human eyeball to estimate
also so that i don’t have to re-wash and dry my one measuring spoon 5 times
1L of water/milk = 1kg. This holds true for most liquids that are measured by volume in metric recipes.
Until one day you have to bake 3,000 Stroopwafels to save the local coffee shop** and you realize that your kitchen scale is about to become the stickiest object known to mankind because you don’t know how much more liquids with super high viscosity weigh per liter…
**specific situation may vary based on how many tulips YOUR country produces per square kilometer.
Deze commentaarsectie is hierbij overgenomen door het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden.
yeah it’s what i use, but if i was happy with less than perfection i’d be using volume in the first place
Except oil.
True, but it’s less than a 10% difference. There’s a very big chance the recipe will work out either way
Tell that to Ice III or Ice V
Those wouldn’t be liquids but solids, no?
But I respect the effort in bringing up a stupidly extreme theoretical situation that you’d never encounter in your kitchen
Well I’m unsure about Ice III, but Ice VI definitely is strange.
Of course my hyperbolic point was really that you can compress a liquid.
Yep, everything in weight. It works so well.
There is a Polish website https://kalkulatorkuchenny.pl/, where you type, say, 1 teaspoon of sugar (łyżeczka cukru) and it will convert it to mass, volume, spoon and number of glasses. I’m pretty sure, there is an English language alternative, but didn’t find any
These are approximations at best. Not every flour type has the same density and even the same type can differ as the thread op pointed out.
I didn’t read carefully, sorry. Anyway, you can specify the type of flour there, so it’s a bit more precise
For using volume measurements (weighs are still superior tho) flour shouldn’t be packed in but spooned into the measuring device and leveled with the back of a knife but brown sugar should be packed into the measuring device.
In recipes, they’ll call for a heaped teaspoon or tablespoon, everything else is implied to be leveled, especially leavening agents like baking powder/soda. There’s also an understanding that certain things don’t need as much precision, like adding in flavoring extracts.
I also do really like the nice even 25° increments that recipes align to for farenheight.
I assume flour can have a lot of moisture weight to it, which may change depending on the location or season. Weight is still the better measure, but still not perfect.
Peel one cup of butter then add pinch of egg and stir counterfootwise at 363 degrees and serve immediately cold.
Congratulations, you’ve just created the most confusing recipe ever.
USAmericans probably don’t see a problem with it.
Pfffft as though we’d be so sane as measure flour by weight instead of volume
Is the UN pushing imperial or something?
Ah yes, the fartenheit scale
Maybe the problem is that the units are actually US customary and you’re dicking up all of your conversions
At least an oz is easily measurable. It’s worse, when they tell You to add a cup of something.
How? I have cups in my kitchen, but no ozes.
Are you using an American, Canadian, British or metric cup ?
Because they are all different measurements.
How do you measure a country so easily?
A cup is about 230 ml, so that’s a little less than a standard drinking glass of 250 ml
Mole
no it’s a beauty mark
Then what’s the Molar Mass?
beauty marker mass
Imagine feeling actual hatred toward a system of measurement.
you would be a bit peeved as well if one guy in a lecture hall with 150 people constantly asked you to convert every measurement in your talk to something only that guy understands.
Okay but that has literally never happened. That’s an absurd scenario you just proposed, you understand that, right? That’s just a situation you made up to make yourself mad, like a toddler.
no
Well now you do. You’re welcome.
“I don’t understand this thing and I’m proud of it!!”
- Europeans
Bonus points if they get to shit on Americans at the same time.
Ha ha yeah like when they can’t tell the difference between the UN and the EU lol
I’m sorry but who are you referring to? I’m sure there’s idiots in every country, but that is quite an outlandish generalization to make if we’re still talking about entire continents.
It’s “to whom are you referring?”, Mr Wordsworth :)
Thank you for the correction kind sir. My deepest apologies sir. English isn’t my native language. Would you perhaps care to elaborate on the claim made in your previous comment, so that this here conversation may have some substance beyond mere grammar.
There is no pride in understanding a nonsensical system of measurements.
Empathize with stupidity and you’re halfway to thinking like an idiot
- Iain M. Banks
You don’t care about that, you just want to feel superior.
Oh no. I just want to be rid of the imperial system. I would have no issue with it if it wasn’t a part of my life. Unfortunately I work in a field where imperial units are used world wide (apart from China and Russia for historical reasons). Because of this, I use some of those units myself every day at work. I understand some of them but take no pride in it. The only reason that the imperial system is still used so much is purely by convention. It is inferior to the metric system in every aspect. I do not feel superior to people who use imperial units because as stated above, I am one of them. People who I feel superior to are the ones who delude themselves into thinking that this somehow isn’t purely because of convention. I dislike them because they are forced upon me by international conventions. OP appears to dislike them because recipes written in English force those units into their life.
Op is an idiot. If I read an article in German, which I don’t understand, I don’t rage about it. I either use a translator app or I find a different recipe.
Bear in mind that there are multiple countries where English is the largest language and metric is used, and that English is the modern lingua franca. It just so happens that the largest english speaking country has some weird ways to measure things. As such those weird measurements and associated conversions are often forced on anyone who wants to look for a recipe in English, be that their native language or not.
the largest english speaking country
India?
Fair point. Rephrase: largest English speaking country by internet footprint, global influence or some similar measure.
Ok that’s a bit shaky but by the same token sometimes when I look up recipes there’s metric measurements. It takes like 30 seconds to look up a site that does conversions.
Despite the stereotype by Europeans, Americans don’t get all butthurt when we see metric. That’s pure projection on the part of Europeans. We just take 30 seconds to look up a conversion and then get the fuck on with our lives.
Europeans flying into an incoherent rage when they see imperial units is just pathetic and childish.
I think you’re taking the trollface in the meme a bit too literally. It’s annoying and unnecessary, and can cause mistakes that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. Ahem, the Mars Climate Orbiter is a good example of a particularly costly one.
Nobody is flying into an incoherent rage. It’s merely annoying having to accommodate the outdated quirks of one country. You having to do the opposite is quite reasonable on the other hand, because you’re not accommodating the conventions of one country, but those of the rest of the world.
Imagine being so small-minded that you refer to everything you don’t understand as nonsense.
And thanks for the quote. Don’t worry, I have no empathy for you.
Oh I understand it pretty well. I just take no pride in that. If I don’t remember something I can always look it up. Doesn’t mean it’s not impractical nonsense.
I prefer using volumetric measurements like cups or teaspoons when baking. Liters or ml would also work.
why?
Not op, but for small quantities, volumetric is usually more accurate. I know a teaspoon of yeast weighs about 3 grams, but most cheap kitchen scales can’t really be trusted until you’re measuring 10 grams or or more. A teaspoon of dried oregano is so light it probably doesn’t even register on most cheap kitchen scales.
Never understood how full a spoon should be
Hmmm yes flour is packed or unpacked? How dense?
For some recipes unpacked and measured by bulk density.
For other recipes you gotta do a slightly overfull cup measured by tamping density.
Figuring out how to measure in which situation is left as an excecise to the reader.
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Oh you want fluid ounces
LMAO cookies are made at 350 or below due to high sugar content
Your pathetic european gas mark stove probably can’t heat below 375
In Europe ovens are usually electric and can be set to any temperature up to ~300°C
yeah I don’t think ours can be even heated to 420 :( fireplace it is then
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375 F = 190.55 C
420 F = 215.55 C
300 C = 572 F
The meme is about Imperial Units such as Fahrenheit
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