conversion for a cup of all-purpose flour), there’d
be no problem at all: each person would weigh out
exactly the same amount, regardless of how they
handled a cup measure.
With its fluffy texture and easy-to-aerate nature,
flour is probably the most extreme example of this
lack of correlation between volume and weight, but
it extends to other ingredients as well.
- Easy cleanup. Think of it this way: to make a pizza
crust recipe that calls for a couple cups of flour, a
half teaspoon of salt, a tablespoon of olive oil, a
cup of water, and a teaspoon of yeast using volume
measures requires you to dirty at the very least a
mixing bowl, a dry cup measure, a liquid cup
measure, a half-teaspoon measure, a tablespoon
measure, and a full teaspoon measure. Total items
to wash: six. Not too nice.
Here’s how I make my pizza crust: place the
bowl on the scale and weigh the required
ingredients one at a time directly into the bowl.
Total items to wash: one. Get it?
- Measuring sticky items is easy. Ever try and
measure out, say, 2 teaspoons of honey? It’s not
easy. Sure, getting the honey into the teaspoon
measure is simple enough—it’s getting it out that’s
the problem. You end up either getting about half
of it out and eyeballing an extra squirt or so
directly from the bottle or, if you’re anything like I
used to be, you end up with most of the honey stuck
to your finger as you try to scoop it out in
