FAQ for alt.bread.recipes

Scaling ingredients

The word scaling, as several people pointed out during the preparation of this FAQ, has a number of different meanings depending on the context. You can scale a formula, meaning that you make more or less dough depending on your need. You can scale dough, which means you weigh pieces of dough the right size for the loaves you are making.

What we are talking about here is scaling ingredients, which is bakery shop talk for weighing or measuring ingredients.

You can get more consistent results from batch to batch by weighing most ingredients rather than measuring them by volume.

This is especially true for flour. The reason is that the amount of flour in a cup varies depending on the way you fill the cup. If you forcefully scoop a cup into a bin of tightly packed flour, you will get up to 50 percent more flour in the cup than if you lightly spoon the flour into the cup and level it off with a straightedge. Because different authors make different assumptions about how much a cup of flour weighs, and because different kinds of flour produce different weights per cup, it is much easier to keep track of how much flour you are using by weighing it than by measuring it.

For somewhat messy ingredients like butter, shortening, oil, honey, and molasses, weighing reduces the mess and waste associated with scraping that last bit out of a measuring cup. For irregular ingredients like raisins or chopped nuts or slided pepperoni, weighing also produces more consistent results.

For ingredients used in very small quantities, such as salt, yeast, and flavoring extracts (such as you might use in a sweet dough), you might choose to use measuring spoons. This is particularly true if your scale is not accurate for small weights. Some electronic scales do not register small weights consistently, although others do an excellent job. Traditional baker's scales (balances with two flat pans), are usually accurate (once calibrated), with a precision of one-quarter ounce, which may not be a fine enough precision for certain ingredients.

But why should you?

If you learned to make bread by watching, imitating, and being mentored in your grandmother's kitchen, and if you have developed a sense of what dough should feel like at each stage, then you may not need a scale to make the breads you know well. You may not even need measuring cups.

However, if you encounter a recipe online or in a book that you want to learn to make, it is helpful if you can learn to make it the way the author makes it and do so successfully. To that end it is good to keep notes of exactly how much of each ingredient you put in each batch, so that you can determine what changes to make in subsequent batches. For this, a scale is a necessity.

Tare

An empty bowl or scoop that you put on a scale in order to weigh ingredients weighs something. This is called the tare weight. You have to adjust the scale to read zero, either by pressing the Tare button on an electronic scale or by placing an equivalent weight on the other pan of a balance. Then you can read directly the weight of anything you add to the empty bowl or scoop. If you intend to weigh more than one ingredient before emptying the vessel, you can either reset the tare between ingredients or do the mental math. The latter occasionally introduces error; but if you're wide awake and focused, it's not difficult.

With electronic scales, you cannot exceed the overall capacity of the scale. If, for example, the scale has a capacity of 10 lb. and you have an earthenware bread bowl that weighs 6 lb., zeroing the scale with a 6 lb. tare weight on it leaves a capacity of 4 lb. Total weights over that will not be reliable. Therefore it is sensible to use a lightweight bowl or scoop on the scale.

Testing an electronic scale for accuracy

Zero the scale and place a pound of butter on it, after removing the butter from its carton. The scale should show 1 lb. or just slightly over (to account for the wrapping). If the butter is in four quarter-pound sticks, also check the weight of that. If you are in a metric part of the world or if you don't have butter in the house, do the equivalent test with something else of known weight. (Obviously, if you have calibrated brass weights, that's a better choice; for most people, butter is convenient.

Next, weigh 0.4 oz. of salt or 10 g of salt, pouring it slowly into the bowl. Remove the bowl with the salt, let the scale settle (it should be negative by the tare amount), and replace the bowl of salt. It should read the same as what you initially weighed. If the scale registers a different amount, do not use the scale for small quantities, but use measuring spoons instead. Some brands of scale are better at the low end than others. Some have reported that Salter scales do not perform well on this test while Pelouze scales do, but you should perform your own test, because new models may not follow the same pattern as older models.

Calibrating a baker's scale

A baker's scale has two round flat pans and a weight that slides on a calibrated beam. Some types have a scoop for ingredients on one side, rather than a pan, and a central dial indicator. Others allow you to use a scoop on one side with a balancing tare weight on the other side.

With nothing on the scale and the sliding weight all the way to the left of the beam (in the first notch, that is), the scale should balance at zero. If it does not, follow this procedure:

1. On the low (heavy side), carefully turn the scale pan counterclockwise to unscrew it from the casting.
2. Note that the casting is a cup containing shot, which may or may not be of a uniform size.
3. Carefully remove a few pieces of shot and set them aside.
4. Place the pan back on the scale and just lightly screw it in (don't need to completely seat it at this point) to test the balance.
5. Continue adjusting up and down until you have a good balance, then tighten the pan.
6. Save the shot you removed in the junk drawer in your kitchen, labeled, in a small plastic bag. You may need it in the future.

If you have a scale with a single pan, you can adjust it the same way if the pan side is heavy. If the pan side is light, you will need to add some weight to it. A gun shop or fishing tackle shop should be able to help you, or you can just use small loose screws and nails you have lying around the house.

You're not done! Next you need to calibrate the weights. Place the smallest weight on the left pan and move the sliding weight along the beam to the nominal value of the weight. For example, if it is a 1 lb. weight, move the sliding weight to the far right of the beam. If the scale balances, the weight is fine. If the weight is light, pull some small coins from your pocket and place them one at a time on top of the weight until the scale is in balance. If the weight is hollow (check the bottom) and has an access hole where you can add shot, use shot instead. If the weight is heavy, you can calibrate it by carefully drilling out some metal from the bottom.

Now that the smallest weight is calibrated, place it on the right pan, place the next weight up on the left pan, and repeat the calibration procedure for that weight.