[fps-hero]

Absolutely cringe worthy. The painful thing is it’s just a simple conversation factor but I couldn’t take the article seriously after that.

Speaking of reinventing, the article rediscovered the concept of bakers percentage, which is how bakers always describe recipes! Except baker’s percentage is unit agnostic and not susceptible to variations in volumetric measurement, ingredient density, and non-universal cup sizes.

[icegreentea2]

Heh, engineering is being about as precise and accurate as needed. Knowing that your taking a shortcut and shrugging and saying "this is easier and still works" is the peak of engineering.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Right? There's some misunderstanding that engineering is about precise measurements and reproducible results. That's a scientist, not an engineer. An engineer is the person who gets the job done and the thing built, and if it doesn't kill someone or explode and start a fire, then that's all good.

But I think treating cooking as any of the STEM subjects is wrong. Cooking is an art. It has to please your senses and senses are not scientific instruments, they're subjective and inaccurate. Recipes are only templates and you need to use the brain to fill in the blanks: if I tell you to add two onions in a stew, can't you use your noggin to decide whether your onions are too small, and so you need to add more than two, or too large and so you need to add fewer? Will it ruin the stew if you add three onions, or one and a half? How many traditional dishes are the result of cooking another dish with what ingredients were at hand, or the result of mixing two things that were previously not eaten together?

[progbits]

But it isn't just a conversion factor exactly for the reasons you state: a cup of flour will be different weight based on brand, how much it settled in the bag etc. Always have to deal with weights.

[blowski]

Do those factors also affect how much volume you need?

[currency]

Baking is literally chemistry. You don't get consistent results if you measure a powder of quite variable density by volume instead of mass.

[explaininjs]

You also don't get consistent results if you assume the type of flour, atmospheric humidity, baking conditions, etc etc. etc. will be the exact same as the recipe author's and simply blindly follow the exact measurements because "precision!".

The best approach is to watch a video that clearly demonstrates how the product should look and feel at every point along the process, and do what you can to imitate that - even if it means leaving your scales and cups in the cupboard.

[eichin]

Right, but you can successfully course correct if you have a reproducible measurement, instead of one that varies by 20% each time you make it (source: Cooks Illustrated magazine on angel food cake, did experiments on how much variation cup measurements of the same flour had - given their audience, probably preaching to the choir, but it was at least a decade ago...)

[explaininjs]

If you know how the right amount feels, it really does not matter one bit how far off your initial measurement is. You start with an amount too low, and you add more until it feels right. If the amount you start with is 24% too low vs 20% too low bears no significance. Obviously you shouldn't start with an amount so far off as to be too high, but again that would never happen if you are going by feel.

[chihuahua]

You want the correct amount by weight. Since volume (for the same weight) varies depending on several factors, it follows that those factors affect how much volume you need.

The technique used for measuring "1 cup" affects how much weight you get in 1 cup. This is in addition to the type of flour, clumping, how densely it was packed in the bag, etc.