Baking by Weight

I have always had a love for baking things from scratch. I remember growing up, my parents had this old, faded Better Homes and Gardens binder cookbook, published circa 1965. The idealized images of the perfectly dressed, sunny-dispositioned housewives serving huge meat-and-potatoes meals to their families always intrigued me and gave me an odd sense of nostalgia. The recipes were classic, yet also wild. (Aspic, anyone?) Every once in a while, I would challenge myself to bake a cake entirely from scratch using that cookbook. For my family, where your birthday cake usually came from a box and was baked in a 9 x 13 casserole dish, this was huge.

The first time I made a cake, and frosting (!), entirely on my own, I thought it was going to be the best thing I ever tasted. Everything homemade has to be, right? I didn’t have some pretty essential ingredients (cake flour, powdered sugar) but I pressed on to create a two layer sensation. I even remember making the frosting a lovely shade of lavender. When it was finished, I wanted to share it with everyone I knew, even going so far as bringing a Tupperware to church. I don’t remember much else about it, but I think I was pretty underwhelmed. The flavors of actual butter and real vanilla extract couldn’t be beat, but it was dense and crumbly. My lack of powdered sugar meant the icing was grainy and heavy.

I like to think that I’ve come a long way since my high school baking days. I know my family certainly has, as serving a box cake for someone’s birthday now would be unthinkable! I enjoyed the experience of that from-scratch baking so much I developed a full-on hobby. I’ve read and researched a lot since then on the importance of good ingredients and baking methods and techniques. Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned is how to bake by weight rather than by volume. Baking by weight increases accuracy and consistency among your bakes. You could scoop out a cup of flour three different times and get three different amounts due to air pockets, clumps, or packing - but 120 grams of flour will always measure the same. It has most certainly improved the quality of my baking, and is just so easy! I love that baking by weight means I don’t have to dirty a bunch of measuring cups, but can just chuck all the ingredients into a bowl.

I have a couple of different scales, but my favorite one is the OXO Good Grips food scale. The reason it’s my go-to is mainly because it doesn’t erase what you’ve measured when it goes to sleep - which is essential for me as a toddler mom who often gets distracted or interrupted mid-measurement. It also has a really high maximum weight and the display can be pulled away from the scale if you have some sort of giant behemoth of a bowl you’re mixing in.

Having ingredient weights listed in a recipe is starting to become more and more common, but I still have a few go-to blogs, sites and books that have really helped me as I’ve started baking by weight. Sally’s Baking Addiction, Bake from Scratch, and Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat cookbook have all been instrumental. My most recent amazing find has been King Arthur Flour’s exhaustive list of ingredient weights. I’m not sure how many ingredients are on this list, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to have something you’re baking with that doesn’t appear on here. When I printed it, it was about 12 pages. An incredible resource!

Let me know if you find this helpful, or if you have any tips or tricks for baking by weight!