Michael Ruhlman’s book, Ratio, effectively refutes the old saw that baking successfully requires careful measuring. To be really impressed with baking skills honed by instinct and experience, check out any video on YouTube’s Country Life Vlog. Heaping scoops, handfuls, and pinches are all that is used for dry ingredients. Water and milk are poured from unmarked pitchers. Butter, sour cream, and yogurt are doled out with oversized spoons.
And baking is in wood-fired ovens with no thermometers or timers. I marvel at the baker’s talent, and laugh at the antics of the resident pets and livestock.
2 Likes
Depends on what you’re making and how picky you are about the result. Lots of things are pretty forgiving but I’d still recommend measuring if you haven’t yet acquired the years of practice to go by look and feel.
7 Likes
When making pizza I have two scales . One to weigh
Yeast 1grn . Its a very small scale . Another one to weigh over 200 grns . Absolutely to keep it consistent.
4 Likes
That video looks to staged/edited and far from a “normal” simple life
There is another thread on this subject that I saw yesterday, and they should be merged, but I can’t find it now to point to it.
I’m firmly in the RLB camp when it comes to baking, i.e. careful measuring is required when baking. Dry ingredients have to be weighed; I’ve seen ridiculous (to me) recipes that call for things like 1-3/4 cups flour lightly sifted into the cup. Imagine the time that takes! Give me my scales (for RLB Metzler, which I used in chemistry labs), for repeatable results.
I have an in-law who insists that the way to measure flour is by putting it into a liquid measuring cup and shaking it down to the volume required; and no sifting for her.
On sifting, I once had to combine plain flour and chestnut flour. After sifting them together, it was obvious there were two distinct flours; it took two additional sifts for a homogeneous mixture. Now imagine combining a teaspoon of baking powder with a larger quantity of flour. I’m in the triple sift camp!
I have found that whisking the measured, dry ingredients together in a bowl combines and lightens them adequately for my use. Much less messy and faster than sifting.
2 Likes
You are mistaken. Google the vlog and you will find data about its inception and tremendous growth. The family was living in a tiny, hobbit-like bermed cabin when the channel began. Income from YouTube enabled the buildings that are there now (the hobbit home is in a nearby location and is still used during planting and harvesting. The videos are edited into vignettes illustrating ongoing chores and projects.
There’s still no plumbing, except a single cold water faucet in the community kitchen, a separate building which also contains a small fridge. Either it is gas-powered or has no power and is used just for storage.
The stream on the property was widened and redirected by the family.
Until last year, they had no vehicle of their own. No phones or computers. They grow wheat and take it to a mill for grinding. Overall, a lifestyle of advanced societies that was replaced over a century ago.
Staged might be the wrong word but highly edited so that it has a certain “feel” for the viewer and looks very “unnatural” (something a lot of people were complaining in different discussions). I also don’t see any evidence that the ingredients aren’t measured in someway before used in the videos. It overall feels like a high-end production trying to make like it is just filming a “simple life” but not being very good at it
I don’t feel confident enough in my baking skills not to measure. I’ve seen people who are much better bakers than I eyeball measurements and estimate quantities, but I don’t have enough experience to be assured the final product will be edible. Whatever you may think about Paul Hollywood, that guy does know baking, and even he measures sometimes.
Off the top of my head, the only thing I don’t really measure when I’m baking is chocolate chips. Recipes that call for chocolate chips rarely call for enough!
3 Likes
I always use at least 50% more chocolate chips than the recipe calls for when making Tollhouse Cookies!
1 Like
I have been told, and believe, that baking is a science and cooking is an art. I know some that can make short breads like biscuits, scones and cornbread by feel, but that takes lots of over and over and learning from the best, like Grandma. There’s a reason that there are baking ratios and just like a chemist, you need the formulas.The best bakers learn them, then put on their twists but still lots of failures before success.
1 Like
And for pizza I start with starter and roughly twice as much flour plus a scant palmful of salt. The consistency enters in as I start adding water to get the texture to get a dough that is slack but not too slack to work.
1 Like
We can be friends!
1 Like
I didn’t get this from reading from Ratio - Ruhlman advocates for measuring by weight in the book and even has a chapter devoted to the kitchen scale and weighing ingredients.
I usually measure by weight while baking, it objectively produces more consistent results. For cooking other things though I’m not so precise in measuring though I will try to use roughly the amounts in the recipe.
I have a milligram scale for yeast too - one pizza dough recipe I use calls for 0.12 grams of yeast.
