We talk about meats and eggs a lot, since that’s our business, of course. But I wanted to share a little tidbit that I learned along my cooking journey, and that is to use a kitchen scale for baking measurements.

First some background: One of the things I especially avoid at stores is bread. Store-bought bread, though we’ve all been conditioned to think it’s so tasty, is so unlike homemade, it’s unbelievable. Real bread molds within days and goes stale even sooner than that, whereas conventional brands last weeks without going stale or moldy. It really makes you wonder WHAT is in that stuff. But you can figure it out by looking at the long (and I do mean LONG) list of ingredients besides poor little flour.

Of course there are a handful of health food brands that are ok, but they are pricey—like $4-6 per loaf! Compare that to a home-baked loaf made from premium chemical-free flours. Even using the best-quality flour, a loaf will only cost you a couple of bucks at most. Huge savings to put toward more pasture-raised meats, right? 😀 Not to mention that you have complete control over the ingredients. And that’s what we’re really after. 

I know a lot of our readers will agree, and yet homemade bread remains a mystery! And a scary one at that! I know how overwhelmed I felt when Bread Day came around. 

Great news. I have unraveled the mystery, and it is that all this time I was measuring my special organic, unenriched, unbleached flour by volume rather than by weight. Figuring out the ideal dough texture was SO HARD because I was trying to teach myself what to look for without a tutor or any formal instruction, but I didn’t have unlimited time or patience to spend perfecting a technique. Sometimes my dough was so runny that it wouldn’t form a loaf at all and it was super-sticky and hard to work with. Other times it was so dry that it wouldn’t rise at all and would remain a dense little lump that was more like a brick than a loaf of bread. I would spend hours standing by the mixer, sprinkling tiny amounts of flour in, waiting for them to be incorporated, and then trying to decide if enough was enough yet. Bread was a huge burden. Sound familiar?

Enter the kitchen scale.

Matt got it for me for Christmas one year (per my request). The scale, paired with the knowledge that a cup of white flour weighs 120 grams, revolutionized my life in the kitchen. I became a bread expert overnight (well, not really–but expert enough for us!). And now I’m sharing this secret with you. Whatever bread or baking recipe you’re using, just use that simple conversion and it will give you consistent, successful results every time. (Except if you underbake it. You can still mess it up if you do that. Ask me how I know. ) Of course, different flours have different measuring densities, so if you’re using whole wheat, potato, coconut, almond, etc, you’ll have to find the correct conversion for those.

A kitchen scale also works great for measuring the fat in recipes. I use solid fats for cooking, like butter, lard and coconut oil. If you’ve ever used these, you know they’re a bit of a pain to measure without dirtying yet another dish and another spatula. No thanks!

The fat conversion you need to know (or to write on a sheet of paper and sneakily tape inside one of your cabinets) is 1 stick of butter is 8 Tbs is 113 g. This works for all common cooking fats. So if a pie recipe calls for a 2 cups of flour and 1/4 cup of butter, you can just use 240 grams of flour and 56 grams of lard. Cool, huh?

All my flour and fat in recipes are measured this way. In fact, if you skim through my most-used recipes, you’d see little division brackets and conversions scribbled all over the place. (I suppose the next revolutionary kitchen tool I’ll get will be a calculator…) It’s a great idea to write down the weights of other common ingredients on your pantry cheat-sheet so you can save yourself the hassle of figuring it out over and over. Then you can save time and money not washing extra measuring cups for things like milk, salt, sugar, etc. 

For those of you who are gluten-free, this will hopefully be a huge aid to you as well. Alternative flours like coconut and almond have an even greater tendency to get packed down and give unreliable volumetric measurements. This will work great for those, too. I have even taken to searching for baking recipes that are given by weight. There’s no guessing in these due to variation in ingredients, plus the recipes tend to be developed by culinary experts–they know baking must be done by weight to be done well every time. 

Because of my kitchen scale (which cost like $11, I might add—pretty small investment!), we have access to fresh-baked, chemical-free bread again because it’s easy enough for me to incorporate into our busy lives.

Here’s a simple recipe for homemade bread for you to try with your new kitchen scale:

Mix 780 g unbleached, unenriched flour (about 6.5 cups) with 1.5 Tbs yeast and 1.5 Tbs salt. Pour in 3 cups of lukewarm (not hot!) water and mix thoroughly, but do not knead.

Cover and keep in a warm place for 2 hours.

Separate the dough into 3 loaves, either free-form, or in loaf pans lined with parchment paper (you can also refrigerate dough to use later). Let rise, covered, for another 1.5 hours in a warm place.

Bake at 450 for 25 minutes.

That’s easier than making lasagna! 🙂 Happy eating!