Hello fellow bakers,

I’m trying to convert all my recipes to the metric system. Upon consuting Rose’s 3 Bible’s weight charts, I noticed minor differences in the weights between the three charts. I know they’re small differences, but was wondering if anybody knew which is the most accurate and which I should base my conversions on.

Thank ahead of time for your help.

Roddy

Yes, I’ve noticed that too, but never got around to asking.  I think some of them Rose has addressed before, like salt and chemical leaving, saying it is better to measure these by volume unless you have a very accurate scale—also that salt is difficult to measure accurately because of varying moisture content.  You can see that most of them are quite small and can probably be attributed to different rounding. Here is the list I kept:

Discrepancies in Grams:

All-Purpose Flour (Bleached), Dip and Sweep
142 v 145

Almonds, Sliced or Coarsely Chopped
75 v 85

Buckwheat Flour, Dip and Sweep
125 v 133

Buckwheat Flour, Lightly Spooned
115 v 119

Bread Flour, Dip and Sweep
156 v 157

Corn Syrup
320 v 328

Molasses
320 v 322

Refiner’s Syrup (Lyle’s)
320 v 340

————————————————————
Discrepancies in ounces:

Almonds, Finely Ground
3.7 v 3.75

Almonds, Powder Fine
3 v 3.12

Almonds, Sliced or Coarsely Chopped
2.6 v 3

Almonds, Whole
6.7 v 6.75

Buckwheat Flour, Dip and Sweep
4.5 v 4.7

Buckwheat Flour, Lightly Spooned
4 v 4.2

Butter, Clarified (Beurre Noisette)
6.8 v 6.9

Corn Syrup
11.29 v 11.5

Cream, Heavy
8.12 v 8.2

Molasses
11.25 v 11.29

Refiner’s Syrup (Lyle’s)
11.29 v 12

Sugar (Light Brown), Packed
7.66 v 7.7

I should also add that the syrup discrepancies come from what I’m sure was an editorial decision to lump all of these together under one listing in the bread bible to save space.

Matthew, THANKS for the list.  Admirable!  All my small weights, like 10 grams or so, I measure both by volume by weight.  Specially useful for baking powder, salt, creme tartar. etc.

I could find it if I needed to, but I do remember reading a note in The Cake Bible that you shouldn’t expect exact conversions to metric weights, as they’ve been rounded to the nearest 5g or 10g.

That brings me to a related question:  What’s the over/under for measuring ingredients by grams?  When I was making the wedding cake, sometimes my eggs would be over or under by a few grams, which I just accepted, with seemingly no ill results.  Sometimes, if I was going to be doing more than one set of layers, I’d reserve some egg if I was over to make up the difference if I was under the next time, but it’s a pain.  On a percentage basis, a few grams extra or short of eggs is hardly enough to throw off the proportions…

Do you all get it EXACT-EXACT, or should I not worry about a few grams here and there?

for eggs, I weight exact to the 1 gram.  And I weight whites and yolks separately because 20 years have passed since Cake Bible and hens nowadays are lazy yolk makers (yolks are much smaller nowadays).

Yes, for 1 recipe, it won’t be critical.  But if you make larger batches it could.