Volume vs. weight - how do you prefer to bake?

I've recently read how much variation there is in the way people measure ingredients. Like one cup of flour can be anywhere from 100 grams to 260 grams (or something like that) depending on how it's measured, never mind that how much is a cup varies from country to country (1 Canadian cup=227ml, 1 US cup=237ml, 1 Sri Lankan cup= anywhere from 160-200ml - don't know about the rest of the world), and then you're just increasing the potential for variation. So how much is a cup, really?

And if you have a scale at home, why don't we extend the experiment? Measure out a cup of flour and then weigh it and report in with your results. I have a crappy scale at the moment - waiting for our budget to allow for an electronic scale, and hopefully that'll be next week.

So if you try out a recipe and it doesn't work, is it because the recipe was inherently bad, or was it because you and the person who created the recipe measure your ingredients differently? Was her cup of flour 200 g and yours is 140 g or vice versa? How can you possibly tell?

A while back, I tried out a recipe (using volume measurements) that absolutely didn't turn out at all. It was lousy, but the reason I tried that particular recipe was because there were so many raves on it at that recipe site. I suspect, now, that it's more because of a difference in measuring ingredients than anything else.

It's no wonder that some people have lousy results. It's also why I'm converting my recipes to weights - it's a more reliable way to predict how a recipe will turn out. If you want to convert recipes from volume to weight or vice versa, there are a couple or three sites that can help. This one is the best that I've found thus far, but recipes still require tweaking after that because it uses averages and can't possibly predict how the original recipe creator measure his/her ingredients.

So? What do you think?

I was a cookbook junkie when I lived in Canada. I must have had six feet of cookbooks. Not one of them discussed how to measure flour. I recently ran across a recipe that described how to measure flour, much like you described, but that's one recipe. One out of perhaps tens of thousands. I think I must be looking at different recipes than you.

I guess size really does matter.

Ol Fashioned Girl, I am salivating at your cookbooks. I'm so jealous! Do you have a tiled counter top? I want that. Ours is a laminate and *shakes head* No, I really want granite or something, but I'd make do with tile, I think.

Okay, I haven't done the measuring thing. I'll have to do that.

Very cool! I completely respect women who are at whom with tools! *coughs* Back in Canada, I had more tools than most men I knew and wasn't afraid to use 'em.