If you are just starting your baking business or want to level up your baking technique, start weighing your ingredients as a regular practice.
Weighing ingredients with a digital kitchen scale is easy, ensures accuracy, and keeps your product consistent, a crucial factor for any successful bakery business.
If you are anything like me you built up your recipe arsenal through years of baking for family and friends. In the beginning, all of my recipes were measured in volume (cups) as opposed to grams. Over time I converted my recipes.
To save time you can use a standard conversion table like this one, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I suggest you test a recipe and when you are happy with it, weigh all the ingredients and use those conversions in your recipe. Your recipes and baking process are the lifeblood of your business.
Don’t take my word for it. From Alice Medrich to Mary Berry, weighing ingredients with a digital scale is a proven tactic across the globe.
Still wondering if it’s worth taking the time to convert my recipes?
A scale is more accurate than using measuring cups. Baking is a science that is based on chemical reactions. Whereas in cooking, you can eyeball ingredients, that would be a disaster in baking. Cooking is much more intuitive than the rigorous measuring required for baking.
One of the first things you will do when you start your business is to take your base recipe and figure out the ingredients and corresponding yield if it was x2, x3, x4, etc. The size of your mixer will play a key role in what you fit in your bowl for each version of the recipe.
Using a scale will save you time. Trust me on this one. When you have to do a x3 recipe it is much faster to weigh out ingredients.
A scale also helps with easy, quick clean-up. You are using fewer measuring spoons and cups that need to be washed and put away.
To use a digital scale, place your bowl on the scale. Press the “zero” or “tare” button to take away the weight of the bowl. Add your first ingredient until you achieve the weight noted in your recipe. Press the tare button again to reset the weight to 0 before moving on to the next ingredient. You can measure several ingredients in one bowl.
Can you save time and just use a standard conversion table? Sure, but you are now baking for paying customers. This is a foundational element of your business so do the work. Taking shortcuts here will only hurt you in the long run.
Have you gotten my Essential 5 P’s for Perfect Product Pricing pdf yet? I created this freebie to take the guesswork out of determining how much to charge for baked goods. Sign up for my email list and your very first email has the pdf.
Check out my blog archive for more helpful articles. Follow me on Instagram at @whiskwarrior where I post weekly tips, resources, and personal experiences operating a home bakery and retail bakeshop.
