Post #172,099
9/1/04 12:01:02 AM
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Recipe measurements: volume or weight?
Some things are easy. A quarter-pound stick of butter has tablespoon marks right on the side. You can pick either one. But for dry ingredients, expecially when working in large volumes, which is the preferred method for consistancy?
For example, if I'm making several dozen loaves of bread I'm not going to measure out 78 cups of flour. But I have no idea how many pounds that would be, or even if I should trust volume and weight to be interchangeably useful. Has anyone ever seen conversion tables like X cups of ingredient Y = Z pounds?
If I'm correct in my assumption that different brands and grinds of different ingredients could yield very different results when doing the conversions, which should I base my recipes on: weight or volume?
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Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #172,100
9/1/04 12:04:48 AM
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Umm, weigh 1 cup of flour and multiply it by 78?
Two out of three people wonder where the other one is.
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Post #172,103
9/1/04 12:13:23 AM
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Depends.
For bread machines, the amount of water is critical. It's much easier to accurately weigh water than to measure it with a measuring cup. Assuming you have something like a digital scale, of course. If I'm correct in my assumption that different brands and grinds of different ingredients could yield very different results when doing the conversions, which should I base my recipes on: weight or volume? You should probably follow the recipe. :-) Maybe Andrew can chime in with what his Navy cookbook says. [link|http://www.eclecticcooking.com/metric.htm|This] page may help (scroll down). I think your supposition is correct. A cup of fine bread flour will probably have a different weight from a cup of rye flour, so there's no hard-and-fast rule. If I needed to make dozens of loaves of bread, I would probably start with some prototype recipe, carefully measuring the ingredients by volume and weight. I would then scale the working prototype up as needed, using weights to do the scaling. HTH. Cheers, Scott.
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Post #172,105
9/1/04 12:24:18 AM
9/1/04 12:24:43 AM
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It's my wife's recipe[1], arrived at through trial and error
And the last step is currently, "If it's too sticky, add more flour. If it's too stiff, add more water." I can't make it worth a damn if she isn't there to make sure it's right, and "add this or that until it's right" doesn't scale very well. If I'm going to help, we need to get something unambiguous.
[1] And it's not bread. It's dog biscuits actually. If you don't have pets, you might be surprised what people are willing to spend on gifts for them.
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Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
Edited by drewk
Sept. 1, 2004, 12:24:43 AM EDT
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Post #172,108
9/1/04 12:30:54 AM
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I know about dog treats and toys, boy do I. ;-)
The way to get the recipe right is to do what she does, but weigh all the ingredients before hand, and weigh what's left afterward. The net is what you used and you can scale that as necessary. That's probably the best way. Keep track of the mixing time too.
Otherwise, just keep practicing until you can do it without her! :-)
Luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #172,119
9/1/04 1:16:31 AM
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So then wha'll happen . .
. . is right in the middle of making the recipe, she'll say to herself, "Hmmmm I'm going to need two cups of this for something else too, so I'll just measure it out now and set it aside". The best laid plans and all that.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #172,169
9/1/04 9:02:13 AM
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Ah, I see you've met my wife then
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Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #172,104
9/1/04 12:20:37 AM
9/1/04 4:46:51 PM
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Weight is most reliable, but . . .
. . if the recipe states volume, that's what you have to start with. Scaling the volume (say finding a 78 cup container) is not going to work, particularly for baking ingredients because gravity packing will assure a higher weight per volume in the larger size.
What I would do is fill a cup perhaps 5 times and each time dump it into the scale. Then I'd divide by 5 to get the weight of a cup (much more accurate than trying to weigh one cup) and go from there.
Lots of recipes leave you wondering, like "a lump tamarind pulp the size of a lemon". So exactly what is the size of the average lemon in Thiruvananthapuram anyway? Eyballing the other ingredients suggest to me it's a lot smaller than in California.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #172,107
9/1/04 12:28:16 AM
9/1/04 11:47:20 AM
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You didn't make up that place name, did you?
That's almost as good as the name I saw on an appraisal today. Hawaiian woman. 40 letters in her middle name. Looked like maybe five consonants.
Thanks for confirming my suspicion that wieght is better for large volume. The 5-to-one tip is good. I'll try that. (Although 14 cups of peanut butter is still going to be a bitch.)
[edit] Vowels, consonants ... same difference.
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Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
Edited by drewk
Sept. 1, 2004, 11:47:20 AM EDT
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Post #172,110
9/1/04 12:38:28 AM
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No, it's real . . .
. . it's the state capital of Kerela (west side of the bottom tip of India). I'm sure the British had some other name for it.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #172,181
9/1/04 10:30:08 AM
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ICLRPD (new thread)
Created as new thread #172180 titled [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=172180|ICLRPD]
To deny the indirect purchaser, who in this case is the ultimate purchaser, the right to seek relief from unlawful conduct, would essentially remove the word consumer from the Consumer Protection Act
- [link|http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?NewsID=1246&Page=1&pagePos=20|Nebraska Supreme Court]
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Post #172,246
9/1/04 4:39:39 PM
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..but with a 'v' for your 'y'
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Post #172,249
9/1/04 4:49:18 PM
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Corrected
On a poor quality map (downloaded from India) it sure looked like a "y" late at night, but yes, it should be a "v".
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #172,137
9/1/04 2:45:24 AM
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Convert to a larger measure.
78 cups is like, what, four gallons? For somewhat less humongous-scale projects, convert your cups to quarts and use a quart jug to measure volume.
[link|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode|Christian R. Conrad]
(I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.)
Your lies are of Microsoftian Scale and boring to boot. Your 'depression' may be the closest you ever come to recognizing truth: you have no 'inferiority complex', you are inferior - and something inside you recognizes this. - [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=71575|Ashton Brown]
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Post #172,168
9/1/04 9:00:03 AM
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Not once it packs down
I seriously doubt five gallons of flour in one container will be the same amount as if I measured it out one cup at a time.
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Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #172,173
9/1/04 9:38:41 AM
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That's why I said, quart jug. They're reusable, you know.
And don't make such ludicrously humongous batches as several gallons at one; what the fuck are you, a *factory*? Single-gallon batches will keep you in the region of not-too-exhausting numbers of times you have to fill that quart jug.
BTW, I seriously suspect the *main* reason for the difference between using a five-gallon container and measuring it out one cup at a time would be the accumulated sloppiness at the edges; you'll hardly be bothered with sifting it into each of those almost a hundred cups, and leveling each of them off with a straight-edge. Natural sloppiness repeated eighty times over will probably introduce a lot more imprecision than the exaggerated bug-bear of "packing down".
[link|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode|Christian R. Conrad]
(I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.)
Your lies are of Microsoftian Scale and boring to boot. Your 'depression' may be the closest you ever come to recognizing truth: you have no 'inferiority complex', you are inferior - and something inside you recognizes this. - [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=71575|Ashton Brown]
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Post #172,194
9/1/04 11:51:58 AM
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Why yes, we *are* a factory
A small one, of course. Last year we went through about 1-1/2 50lb sacks of flour in about a month. Measuring one cup at a time. I know that wouldn't make it through a busy morning at a bakery, but we haven't even started advertising yet.
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Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #172,197
9/1/04 12:09:12 PM
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Do you do mail order? Our doggie love peanut butter...
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Post #172,198
9/1/04 12:15:28 PM
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Soon as I have the site written
We're working on standardizing packaging sizes/weights so we can do a shipping pricelist. Current plan is go live Oct 1.
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Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #172,245
9/1/04 4:32:23 PM
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Wow, cool! Yeah, in that case, go ahead and weigh it.
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Post #172,154
9/1/04 7:50:59 AM
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Another .02...
When I bake something like a dozen loafs of bread or something, I usually proof my yeast at once in a half cup of water per loaf. Then for each loaf, I sift the flour into measuring cups to get the correct amount, add yeast, seasoning and the remaining liquids and put each loaf away for the first rise as I finish them. I was taught that the sifting part was important because you don't get variation caused by settling and packing.
For dog biscuits, you might break it up into a number of batches which are more managable. It's easier to work with, and if you screw up one batch (never happen, I know, but...) the net loss is a lot less than if you screw up one huge batch.
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