Showerthought: A baker in Boise taught me to weigh my water

I was at a small bakery there last year and the owner saw me eyeballing water for a dough. She said, 'If you weigh your flour, you should weigh your water too, it changes the whole game.' I started doing it and my sourdough crust got way better. Anyone else weigh their liquids now?

4 comments

4 Comments

miller.rowan1mo ago

Honestly, that sounds like a fast track to sucking all the fun out of baking (looking at you, @matthewdixon). Sometimes a little guesswork is the secret ingredient.

jennifer83328d ago

Is it bad that I totally get the control thing @matthewdixon mentioned, but also kinda miss when baking felt more like a crapshoot? I mean, my grandma never measured anything and her pies were amazing. She'd just grab a handful of flour and toss it in like it was no big deal. Meanwhile I'm over here weighing my coffee beans to the gram and still somehow messing up the water ratio half the time. Maybe the real secret is just having a light hand with the ingredients and a heavy hand with the butter, idk.

skyler_jackson271mo ago

That line about it changing the whole game is so true. I see this everywhere now. People measure coffee beans by weight, not scoops. They weigh laundry detergent instead of using the cup. It feels like we are all slowly learning that our eyes and cups LIE. The real recipe is in the grams, not the guess.

matthewdixon1mo ago

Seriously though, is this just about being more accurate, or is there something deeper? Like, are we all just craving more control in a chaotic world by weighing our coffee? Feels like a quiet rebellion against guesswork in everything.