January 17, 2024 - 1:42pm
Understanding measurements in Bread: A Baker's Book
Hello!
New here, and relatively new to home bread baking (under a year). I was going through the book "Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes" and I am having some difficulty understanding the measurements used for flour in the recipes.
In the appendix, it states to convert ounces to grams, multiply by 28.35. So, if it calls for 10.6 ounces of bread flour, then that would be 300.51 grams. However, in parentheses next to the ounces, it says 2 3/8 cups. Knowing that a cup of bread flour is 120 grams, that yields 285 grams. This is consistently a problem.
Has anyone used recipes from the book and what is the suggestion?
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A cup of flour isn't guaranteed to be precisely 120 grams. Different grinds, more tightly or loosely packing it, or how fresh it is can all impact the exact weight.
Hamelman's a professional baker; he most definitely originated this recipes using weights rather than cups and tablespoons. If you have a kitchen scale at home, use it. If not, the measures will get you pretty close and then you can make adjustments as your situation necessitates.
It's a great book but, yeah, at first I found the professional focus a bit daunting. After sitting with it for a while I now think that he's sharing his expertise and does a respectable job of scaling it down for those of us playing along at home.
Good luck!
So trust the weight and not the cups, and if I want to use grams (which isn't necessary), I should convert from the ounces and not cups. Sound about right?
Yeah, I think so.
It probably isn't worth the effort but it'd be interesting to track when you weigh things out, how close that comes out in volume to what you would have added had you used the measures instead.
Makes sense. I also just found a page that talks about it, and says the cups have been rounded up/down as appropriate. I think the real solution is to just use the baker's percentages.
Perhaps he’s making a point that in bread baking “approximately” is often as good as “exactly” and convenience is often quite convenient. But I totally agree about bakers %!
Yes, indeed. The weight for a cup can depend on how the ingredient packs down, how you, the baker, packs it down and does or does not sift it first, plus the kind of flour, etc. For flour, the weight in grams per 1/4 cup is usually marked on the package (in the US, anyway) and you could either just multiply that out to get cups, or (better) measure your own cups and see if they differ. But even then you can't tell if your measurements agree with the recipe writer's, and they might not even be consistent from one ingredient to the next.
Where it doesn't matter much, like how much buttermilk to add to flour for (US) biscuits - this is a case where you have to go by feel - sure, use cups as a starting point. Otherwise weight is better.
TomP
"all" of the book's (2nd Edition) formulas are in 3 measurements. Just move the decimal point in the Metric version to find the weight you wish to use.
In a simple example Ciabatta with Poolish on p. 99 in metric is designed to make 17.61 kg of dough. If you decide to make, for example, 1.761 kilo or 1,761 grams of dough, move the decimal point over to the left. Follow suit on all metric measurements.
Overall formula: flour 1,000 g, water 730 g, salt 20 g, fresh yeast 11 g.
If you don't have a formula spreadsheet, and you want to make 700 grams, multiply all ingredients by 40%, and so on.
Alfanso has the right idea. Just use the metric quantities in the formula, moving the decimal point as needed. That's what I've done with his formulas.
I wish bread recipe books would just use metric measurements for all the weights. The cups quantities should be in parentheses for those who prefer them. And did you know that a fluid ounce is different from a "weight" ounce? In the metric sysytem, 1 g of water is 1 mL. Not so with 1 oz of water.
We're just so stubborn in the US with our adamant avoidance of the metric system.
And the size of "teaspoon" and "tablespoon" varies from country to country, sometimes by quite a lot.
I remember when I was in elementary or Jr. High the US tried to start moving over the metric system. It was an absolute failure and there was so much resistance that they gave up. I wish they had stuck with it so by now everyone would be using it. I measure everything in grams now when baking and couldn't imagine going back to using cups.
A cup of bread flour is whatever you want it to be. There's a simple solution though: no cups, no ounces - no problems.