If you didn’t see this, the URL is: 

<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/dining/tipping-the-balance-for-kitchen-scales.html?_r=1&ref=dining&pagewanted=all>

It’s past time for newspapers all across the country to change their ‘style books’ and print weights in addition to volume measurements.

Agreed!!!

Thank you for sharing…. and giving us hope that maybe more cookbook writers are listening.

CRenee - 14 September 2011 07:39 AM

and giving us hope that maybe more cookbook writers are listening.

Seriously.  I get tired of the defense “We print volume measures because that’s what Americans use.”  My thought is, “How about exhibiting some leadership in helping them change?”

And the New York Times is one of the worst offenders.

Woot woot! Wouldn’t this be wonderful!?

Has anyone noticed that the New York Times has started to provide weights for some of the ingredients in cakes, etc.

I hadn’t noticed- that’s great!  I made one cake from the NYT and it was bland, I think I used too much flour, but they didn’t specify how they measure, so I guessed.

Nice to think I can consider them as a source again!

Julie - 14 December 2011 05:41 AM

Nice to think I can consider them as a source again!

Yeah, I have that NYT Cookbook which would have been so much more useful had it included weights.

The single thing that improved my baking was when I started weighing ingredients.  I’d tried this before, back in the 70’s, when your only options were super-expensive balance scales or crappy spring based cheap kitchen scales that were worse than measuring by volume. 

But there are a lot of affordable and fairly accurate (if you’re not a drug dealer) scales out there now, and using one has vastly improved my baking.  Even pizza dough, which I always considered I had a good handle on, is a lot better and easier to make now.

One caveat to the article - the author talks about putting his pot on the scale and then running water into it until it reads “60 oz”.  Your scale’s max capacity is the TOTAL weight on the scale, including the weight of the container, tare function notwithstanding; so if your scale’s max capacity is 5 lbs and you put a pot on there and still want to weigh 60 oz (4 lbs 12 oz) of water, your container better weigh less than 1 lb 4 oz. 

OK, TWO caveats:  one cup of water (8 fluid ounces) does NOT weigh 8 ounces avoirdupois.  It weighs 8.35 oz (well, 8.345264); so if he wanted 7 1/2 c of water (60 fluid ounces), he should have weighed out 62.6 oz avoirdupois of the water.

Actually density (and hence weight) is also affected by temperature, but there’s no reason to go overboard, LOL!  At 60F, 7.5 c of water would weigh 62.534 oz avoirdupois; close enough, ne?

PS:  Doesn’t this guy have a 4 c measure in his kitchen to start with???  The idea of only having a 2c measure kind of boggles the mind…