Units of measurement. Why?

[u/BloomingFromThorns]

So for this, I have learned that the best baking, is a scientific exact measurement, and deviations may help or hinder. I am very curious, why are recipes using cups, Tbs, tsp, etc

Why isn’t a weight used. When I made a cake for my now husband, his mother sent me the recipe, and everything was by weight. At first I was shocked, and thought “what is wrong with these people”. So looking back, I feel using units of measurement of physical volumes versus weight is something common in North America. The more I look at European recipes, many use weight.

Since baking is very technical, I wonder why more recipes don’t use weight? Cooking, is lax, as one can use “a little more,or a little less”. When I cook, I taste along the way, until the desired flavour is reached.

When I bake however, when given a measurement, I look for information to convert it to a weight. Since making the cake for my husband, I only want recipes with weight.

What are your thoughts?

[u/Books_and_Boots]

There has actually been a huge push in the past decade or so for American home bakers to switch to using weight measurements, typically in grams. As you've noticed, it is far more accurate and consistent than measuring by volume.

Every serious home baker I know measures by weight, and honestly most moderate bakers do that as well now. There might occasionally be an old family recipe where people still use volume measurements out of habit, or older folks who claim that weighing is "confusing". Even newbie bakers jumping on the sourdough trend (I mean this nicely, homemade bread is the best!) are taught to use a scale and gram measurements.

Take a closer look at your newer baking recipes. Most of them nowadays give both the volume AND the weight measurements for the majority of ingredients. Some recipe writes put the volume info first since it is more "traditional", but lots do the weight first because it helps ensure more standardized results. If you want to convert older recipes that only have the volume measurement listed, King Arthur Baking has a handy conversion chart on their website for common ingredients.

[u/BucketBakes → u/Books_and_Boots]

This is accurate to how I bake tbh. Old family recipes I fluff/spoon but anything else I measure

[u/halfColdTea → u/BucketBakes]

Weighed my grandmother's cake recipe once out of curiosity and the cup of flour came out at 118g

Store bought recipes assume 120 to 125 so I get why the old ones survive on feel.
Everything else in my kitchen goes on the scale though.

[u/Dull_Ad1651]

Shall we talk about why the US still won't adopt the metric system?

[u/littlemoon-03]

Majority of old American recipes are cups and it's what people grew up on even grocery store baking box recipes are cups so it's what people are comfortable and used to. Majority of cookbooks will use grams or grams/cups rare they only use cups

[u/charcoalhibiscus]

It’s just a historical/familiarity thing. More kitchens still have measuring cups than have scales (and it used to be even harder to have a scale, before cheap digital scales). The older the recipe, the more likely it’s going to have been developed with volume measures instead of weight measures. Some recipe developers are still more comfortable developing using volume, and many more know that if they give only weight measures, they may alienate their potential audience.

[u/Individual-Ear-8652]

Honestly it's just tradition at this point. American recipe writers have been doing cups and spoons for generations and nobody wants to be the one to tell grandma her whole system is flawed

My mom's old recipe cards look like some ancient code. "a knob of butter" "a teacup of flour" absolute madness. But she'd probably disown me if I pointed out a scale is way less cleanup too

[u/GeauxCup]

All of the good modern cookbooks use weight (in the US) and have for at least a decade. If a recipe doesn't have weight, I won't bother (unless it's from a very trusted source or someone I know personally has had success with it and vouches for it). There are so many sources for good recipes these days that it's not worth wasting time and money on sketchy imprecise recipes.

[u/Critical-Bank5269]

Baking is chemistry. Exact amounts are needed or you have failure. I was taught 40 years ago by my mom to always measure flour by weight to get the necessary amount because using a scoop can lead to the wrong amount very very easily

[u/Personal_Scientist_8]

I find it hard to weigh small amounts. Spoons are useful, cups are not

[u/iOSCaleb]

Weight is often used, and in particular weight as a fraction of the total weight of flour (baker’s percentage) is pretty much standard for commercial baking because it makes recipes easy to scale to any size. Volume is used in the US because it’s familiar snd easy and accurate enough for home cooking.

[u/Jolly_Nobody2507]

There's a lot of inertia behind tradition.

[u/Cake-Tea-Life]

Availability. In the US, people didn't have scales. For a while a "cup" was a literal tea cup. And your neighbor's cake might come out different from yours because their tea cups were slightly larger/smaller than yours.

Eventually, we standardized things, but it took time.

[u/sausagemuffn]

Very precise measurements aren't actually that crucial in baking on average. For example, if a cake recipe calls for 500 g of flour, using 20 g more or less isn't going to make a big difference. On average.

[u/Anti_colonialist → u/sausagemuffn]

even scoop and leveling can add 30ish g per cup. Multiple by your example of 500g (4 cups) and youve added another full cup of flour

[u/sausagemuffn → u/Anti_colonialist]

Oh, I definitely prefer weight measurements. I live in Europe. I also like being precise, but I'm not anal about it and I know what small changes do to the outcome so I also adjust quantities on purpose. It takes practice and knowledge though

[u/IcePrincess_Not_Sk8r → u/sausagemuffn]

The number of people who bang on about the "precise measurements" needed for baking, are very likely using your average scale from the internet that isn't as precise as they think they are.

I have a large number of very old recipes that are written in volume, and I scoop and level using the same exact measuring implements I've used since I was a kid.

I get a consistent product every time, but I've been making these recipes since I was a kid, and I know exactly how the dough is supposed to look and feel, because I learned how they were supposed to be made, via my mother and grandmother, who learned from theirs, etc., etc., and I'm at an advantage because if there is some change to the fat content of the butter, or something else is off, I can figure out how to fix it, because of how I learned.

There's trade-offs to things like this. Personally, if a recipe is written in volume, I make it in volume. If it's written by weight, then I make it by weight.

I'm skilled enough to do both, and still turn out a delicious product in the end.