I live in a humid climate (near Houston) and I started baking bread before I had a scale, so I have learned to use volume and weight measurements as approximations and go by feel. You do need to know if you are mixing a heavy dough, a soft dough, a wet dough (some are barely manageable). I do have a scale now and when I have weights, I will use them, but I still use the flour amount as an approximation.

I don't have a dough whisk, but I have a friend who loves hers. I would think it would be best for batters rather than bread dough, but I don't know. I have a sponge waiting to become a dough -- better run. Will seee what our dough whisk users advise.

I just made my first bread (I tried to bake a few years ago, but it was not a good experience). I made the Overnight White Bread from Ken Forkish's Flour Water Salt Yeast. It turned out amazing!

All his stuff is by weight. The recipe I made called for 1000g which he gave the equivalent as 7 3/4c. Google says it's 35.2 oz.

My absolutely un-educated guess on the different size buns is that ingredients weren't mixed thoroughly or different parts of the dough got overworked. Maybe?

I do use my scale to weigh when dividing dough. I find the air pockets can be uneven after turning out my dough -- or for whatever other reason eyeballing it doesn't work out as evenly. I don't get a lot of variance without weighing, but using the scale actually makes it faster than guessing and I know they will bake evenly.

I weigh by grams. 1000gs is a 1000gs. But recipes that specified both were not the same using the flour that I use. Even Ken Forkish recipes which specified both came out different when I went by cups. I think he specified 7 1/2 cups and my flour weighed out at 1000g at 6 to 6 1/4 cups.

Now I just use the basic 1000 g and adjust the percentage of water, between 65% to 82% up to 92% if making ciabatta.

And I've adopted Ken Forkish's pinch and fold method for all the breads I've made recently.

~Ann

Congratulations on the Danish Dough Whisk. I couldn't live without mine!!!! When using it for making a yeast dough by hand, it incorporates the flour better and really works to develop the gluten strands better than a wooden spoon. When done correctly, it may take several hundred strokes to do a good job developing the gluten while the dough is in the bowl, a task that is often done incorrectly.

Add the flour a little at a time to the liquid ingredients and beat the mixture with the Danish Dough Whisk until it is well incorporated, then add a little more flour and repeat until you don't have the strength to beat it any more. You should have a fairly smooth dough to knead. If your dough is pretty shaggy and sticky and you need a lot of bench flour for kneading, then you didn't do a good job developing the gluten during the mixing.

The Danish Dough Whisk is even better used with batters (muffins, quick breads, etc.) so you don't over-develop the gluten. So many people over-mix batters by using a Stand Mixer or hand-held mixer, when they really should be mixed by hand. Even cakes will come out better if you add the dry ingredients with a Danish dough whisk.

As for weight measurements.... Flour has too many variables with the moisture level and the protein level to be able to use weight strictly for measurements for yeast breads. You still need to go by the "feel" of the dough and adjust it accordingly. Flour measurements - cups or weight - are only a good (or bad) guess when it comes to yeast bread.

Depending on how old your flour is and how it was stored, it might have a lot of moisture in it (stored in a bag in a humid environment), or very little moisture (air-tight storage in arid conditions).

Protein levels of flour changes from bag-to-bag and brand-to-brand. Protein (gluten) absorbs moisture like a sponge. If you use a lower protein all-purpose flour, you may need less hydration (or add more flour), while a high-protein bread flour or a Northern All-Purpose flour like King Arthur All-Purpose or Robin Hood, may need more hydration (or add less flour) because there is a lot more protein in those flours.

FYI - there are NO standards for converting a cup of flour to a weight, and you will find "experts" and charts that have a wide variety of options. And even with exact measurements of weight, you still need to adjust for moisture level of the flour as well as the difference in protein content.

The only thing I scaled when making bread was the dough so I would place the proper amount of dough in the correct size pan. I also scale the dough for burger/hot dog buns, dinner rolls, sandwich rolls, etc. so they are the same size and bake evenly.

Jumbo - 10x4-1/2" pan - 4-5 cups flour - 2-pounds dough
Quick Bread Pan - 9x5" - 4 cups flour - up to 2# dough
Standard - 8-1/2x4-1/2"- 3 cups flour - 1-1/2# dough
Medium - 7-1/2x3-1/2" - 2-1/2 cups flour - 1# dough
Small - 5-3/4x3-3/4" - 1-1/2 c. flour - 8 oz. dough
Miniature - 4-1/2x2-1/2" - 3/4 c. flour - 6 oz. dough

-Grainlady

Congrats on the new tools! Great gift!

The thing about the Danish Dough whisk is that it can mix all of the ingredients fast. This is important for some breads. I find it works best in a taller, rather than wider bowl. Even if I'm going to knead in the mixer, I'll use the dough whisk to mix the ingredients. It does a better, faster job than the mixer paddle.

If I'm using an unknown recipe, one that I haven't done a lot and know by feel, I much prefer to go by weight. It's far more accurate from kitchen to kitchen than volume. BUT, unless it's a recipe given by weight, don't try to convert it before you've baked it some and really know it (I ended up in trouble trying that). The standard baker's measure, is, in fact, 120 g flour per cup, or about 4.23 (or four an a quarter) ounces. When you weigh what people measure out as "cups" however, you get really wild swings in weight. Your best bet is to measure the way the recipe says but pay closer attention to the descriptions, "shaggy dough", "sticky ball", etc. That gives you a better indication of the amount of flour and water than anything else. I've tried for years to define, on paper, how to measure flour for my mother's challah, and no one ends up making it because it's so hard to convey. So just go by the adjectives and consider the measures a starting place, and make the recipe your own. Adjust the next time if you want to tweak the outcome.

Just don't get too caught up. :) It's supposed to be fun!

I don't measure or weigh flour for bread. I use hooks and when the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl, that's enough flour.
I do weigh flour for a French Tart recipe. The recipe calls for a weight and it works fine every time.
I made a pie last week and I think I mismeasured the butter so I put more flour and more flour then I chilled/ worked and chilled/worked the dough. I was going to throw it out. It would not roll, stuck to everything and broke apart. Finally I pressed it into the pan manually. Best pie crust ever! Flaky, moist, the crust was almost better than the filling. Now I wish I had weighed or measured the amount of flour I added and how many times I chilled it and reworked it.

Jasdip, you will find that the majority of the better bread sites,all use metric. Your scale can probably be adjusted to weigh in grams or ounces.

~Ann

Have fun with your new toys! I have a dough whisk and I love it, too. Thank you, grainlady, for the helpful advice on using it. I hadn't even thought about using it with batter breads.

I'm going to use my dough whisk for mixing meatloaves etc as well. I think it would be great for that.

My bread recipe uses 5 cups of flour and makes 2 loaves, 9x5".
I mix my dough until it gets too heavy and I can't mix it, then knead. I need more practice with the dough whisk.

Ann, yes, it definitely has imperial and metric measurements. I've never baked using metric.

I have a recipe for a fruit torte that came from a Swiss friend, and you weigh 3 eggs. You then add the equal weight of butter, flour and sugar. Very cool.

Check out King Arthur Flour's bread recipe website. I'll link it below. You can select that the measurements be given in volume, grams, or ounces in nearly all recipes.
A good starting point.

Here is a link that might be useful: King Arthur Flour bread recipe website

I love my dough whisk for making bread! I bought a scale a few years ago and it never worked well - now it doesn't work at all. I hope to one day find a good brand of scale that I can afford.

Recently I found a very good bread making web site that teaches what looks like some professional techniques in a very clear, descriptive format. I've been making bread for over 30 years and I found some good tips on the site.

Here is a link that might be useful: Titli Nihaan's Bread Kitchen

teresa, I'm linking the website where I got my scale. I got the My Weigh 1 because it was reasonably priced and I knew a couple of people who used it, but they have lots of options.

Here is a link that might be useful: Scales of all sorts

Thanks, lascatx! I found a kitchen scale for me, that's affordable!

Teresa

I use the dough whisk mostly for things like muffins and quick breads, but I also like it for heavy cookie doughs, it's just easier to stir and, as mentioned, it doesn't develop the gluten as much, so no tough cookies.

As Grainlady mentioned, weighing for bread is not consistent from one loaf to another. The amount of flour depends on the flour, the humidity, the recipe, the type of wheat, a zillion things. If you know how it looks or feels, that works more consistently.

I don't weigh anything and I'm never switching to metrics, it makes me nuts, I can't remember to this day how much a gram is. I do know all the local drug dealers use metrics, LOL, and I know a liter because soft drinks comes in 2 liter bottles. If I find a recipe that requires me to convert metrics I just find a different recipe. (grin) Yeah, I know, I have NO patience at all.

Thus, my bread is done by cups and tablespoons and look and feel, and that works for me.

Annie

LOL!! Annie, I admire your determination. i like using grams because it says it on the scale, and it's a smaller unit than an ounce. Makes the math easier. :) And you're absolutely right that a recipe is an approximation. I do find that weights are more accurate to that approximation than volume, so if I'm going to do a recipe I've never made before, I'd rather one that uses weight. Both are variable, but volume is more so, unless you sift, and then it's still a little more accurate. Perhaps that's less true if you live somewhere with wildly swinging humidity, though...

These last few months, I've been learning how to make breads that are very different than the ones I'm used to, with different flour and different yeast. It was probably something I should have eased into, but I just leapt into the deep end and had some "interesting" results. It's very hard to judge if the dough is off if you don't know what it's supposed to be like to begin with. That's why I advocated looking for the adjectives. They help more than anything.

Right this moment, I have a loaf from a new recipe in the oven. I started off trying to follow a recipe, which meant starting a very wet rye starter. The wheels came off halfway through, when the starter started dying and I just fixed it rather than worrying about the requirements of the recipe. Then I fixed the preferment to try to get back on track, and that worked. But then I sort of went my own way with the flour choice, and started adjusting back to the recipe, but kneaded and folded in the same bowl as it rose in to cut down on wash water, which worked, but I think it was meant to absorb more flour from the bench so I sprinkled flour, but it didn't cloak well, and I needed a second pan, and then it sank, so I changed it again to a sided pan and gave it some extra rise time. And it has the best oven spring of any of these new recipes I've tried! We'll see what happens when it comes out.

So, yes, listen to your instincts and do what you think you need to to get it to come out, even if what you end up with isn't the recipe you thought you were starting with!

Annie, in Canadian magazines the measurements are listed in both metric and imperial. I always use the cups and ounces!

Drives me crazy grocery shopping. Everything is weighed in grams and kg, etc. The price is per lb. I divide the meat by 2.2 then I have an approximate weight in lb. Same as when I find something not on sale and the price is per kg. Dividing by 2.2 gives me the approximate price per lb.

The only thing I'm comfortable with are Celcius and price of gas per litre. (far too high!)

I make bread every week for the most part. Some of it turns out, some not so much, but it's all good and always gets eaten. Yesterday's bread is delicious!

The dough whisk is going to be fabulous for muffins! I definitely have to mix the dough more before adding more flour, as Grainlady mentioned. I don't do that.

Jasdip, a cup of flour is somewhere around 4.3 to 4.5 oz. It is going to vary depending on how you pack your cup. So 5 cups would be around 22 oz. 20 oz would come out to about 4.5 cups if you are careful to not pack the flour and just put it in the cup loosely as it should be.

A cup of flour is about 125 grams.

I prefer to make bread by weight and usually do. I find it faster to measure the ingredients that way.

Converting recipes figuring 4.4 cups to oz has worked well for me. Below is a link to a site with a conversion calculator for flour and some other ingredients.

Because of the variation in moisture content of flour, sometimes the amount of flour has to be adjusted. I try to start out putting in the lowest amount of flour the recipe might need and then add a bit more if the dough is too wet because it is easier to work in a bit more flour than to work in a bit more water.

Sometimes if the dough seems a bit wet, I'll just let it sit for 20 minutes and then try kneading it again because that gives the flour some time to absorb the water and react with it. Often what was seemed a too wet dough is easy to work with after that rest.

Here is a link that might be useful: Traditional oven coversion calculators

Thanks cloud! I do fluff the flour and then spoon it into the cup, then level.

I get impatient when making bread. I guess I sub-consciously think that the kneading has to be done all at once. Because it was so humid yesterday, the dough was very sticky to work with. I'll have to tell myself to let it rest for a while. I think I'm afraid of having it form a crust or something.

jasdip,
Try the autoleyse method when mixing your bread dough: mix in about half your total flour measurement, do not knead, you can cover your mixing bowl or not (I usually don't) and let the dough rest for 15 minutes. Set a timer so you won't forget it, then add in the rest of the flour, mix well, knead as usual, and then set to rise for the first rise. This rest period gives the flour a chance to more fully hydrate. I learned this from the good people over on the PizzaMaking.com forum.

Yesterday I mixed up some brioche dough and chilled it overnight. Today I made some cinnamon rolls and plain sugar topped rolls with the dough. A little bit of heaven!!! Only second time I have made brioche, as I usually don't have the time it takes. But I will be making it again.

Teresa, I would be happy with either with a cup of coffee.

I use the autolyze method too. Have for years. Regardless of the size of the batch, I mix all my flour and water, cover, and let it sit 20 to 30 minutes. Then I add the salt and yeast, mix and let that sit for another 20 minutes. I use this method whether mixing by hand or by Magic Mill.

Saturday night, I mixed a batch of baguette dough by hand, using organic hard white winter wheat, that was milled the same day. Added 200 g to 800 g of my regular bread flour. It was in the fridge until this morning.

Baked eight mini baguettes. The colour of the crumb was more golden because the flour wasn't sifted.

~Ann