Without really thinking about the 'why' of it I went out and bought a nice little digital scale to use for my baking. When I went to explain to my 8-yr old DD why we would weigh the flour rather than just measure it in a cup I had to stop. Can someone please explain away this weird thought I have of flour soup??? Imagine if you will, a bag of flour (for sake of argument only) that is 50% water weight. If I put 1 1/3 cups of water in my recipe and 2 pounds of flour just how much flour am I really putting in? If flour is wetter it weighs more so you'd put in less actual flour, right? So what am I doing putting in more water (recipe water + water in the flour)? Wouldn't volume make the results more consistent? OR, is there an inversion that I need to perform...you know...if 2 cups weighs 2 pounds put in 4 cups because 2 cups should only weigh a pound. This has got me so shaken I'm happy to be kneading bread dough. TIA oz

Hi,

So i was mulling over baking techniques and adding a few things together. Namely:

- professional restaurant ovens are optimally sized to bake whatever they're baking. eg pizzeria ovens are just tall enough to clear a pizza. this reduces wasted energy, heating only a volume of air that is in contact with the baked good.

- heating a small space is cheaper and quicker than heating a large space.

- the Oven in an Oven method traps moisture from the dough and keeps it close to the crust.

- most baked goods do not fill up an entire oven. a 16 lb turkey does, but not three one-lb loaves.

ok, so the distillation of all that is: can we modify our kitchen ovens to bake bread in the most efficient way possible?

essentially, can we form an insulating barrier inside the oven, effectively minimizing the amount of energy needed to keep it hot?

has anyone attempted this? i'd be very interested in trying something like this, considering that when i make 1 lb of bread, i have to heat up a space maybe 20-30x larger than i need to.

Hi everyone,

I am very new to the way how American amateur bakers measure their ingredients for baking a bread.

As you might have found out I am from Germany (small country in central Europe ;-)
There we also have many amateur bakers.

And because of cold climate farmers grow rye besides a not too good wheat. And that since hundreds of years.

So our bread baking tradition is a rye-bread tradition.
In southern Europe they have wheat breads.