I use a digital scale all the time, mainly because I buy a lot of ingredients in bulk, and if I didn’t have a scale, I would have to guess as to what constitutes a pound of beans. Bakers prefer to weigh flour because it is more accurate than measuring it by volume, and I have found that this does lead to more consistent results when making either yeast breads or quick breads.

Using a scale is also easier when weighing oddly-shaped foods, like pasta. A cup of rotini is not the same as a cup of ditalini which is not the same as a cup of spaghetti—assuming you can actually figure out how to fit spaghetti in a measuring cup. This is especially true when measuring fruits and vegetables. How much is a “medium-sized” onion? A medium-sized butternut squash? (I have yet to see a recipe that calls for a large butternut squash, or a small one, for that matter.)

I use a digital scale. It’s not as fancy as the one on the left, but the ability to tare it out makes it worth the price.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.