Recommended precision scale?

Pegeen July 22, 2016

Just found a recipe on epicurious.com.

Pegeen July 22, 2016

@MyGardenersTable, Your blog is wonderful. Sorry, this is off topic, but by any chance do you have a recipe for Rote Grütze? I would be deeply indebted. I worked in Germany for a while and nothing made me happier than this compote of red berries. I tried to bring it back to the States with me to try to reverse-engineer it, but it got confiscated in Customs. It is hard (and expensive) to obtain the red currants but it would be fun to tinker with substitutions. I can't remember what other berries are traditionally included. Thank you for any thoughts you might have!

Nadia H. July 21, 2016

@Susan W: My blog is spoonfulsofgermany.com Strange I see it listed in my profile. @Linnea Lannon: When you get a chance to look at the Bouchon Bakery book could you see which scale is recommended there? The trouble with the Oxo which otherwise works fine is that it erratic and slow when it comes to kicking in or reacting to show 1 g, it happens that I pile on almost a tablespoon until is displays 1 g. I don't mind a bit of variation but in the lower grammage that scale is just not precise enough for me.

Susan W. July 21, 2016

It could be because when I'm on this site, I'm usually on my iPhone or Kindle. I may see your blog if I was on my laptop. I'll check it out.

The Salter scale I mentioned is quite sensitive, but it would not measure 1/4 tsp as one gram. The best it did was measure 1/2 tsp as 2 grams.

Susan W. July 22, 2016

Correction to my scale. It occurred to me that my tsp could be off and not my scale. Just a couple of extra grains in my 1/4 tsp did in fact then measure 1 gram. I know that doesn't help you in your search, but maybe someone else has a need for a scale that does measure 1 gram. The end. :)

Love your blog.

pierino July 24, 2016

Bouchon Bakery doesn't recommend a specific scale but it does at least offer a source; myweigh.com

BakerRB July 15, 2016

I picked up a ~$10 500g Fast Weigh / American Weigh scale from amazon a couple years ago for baking. It works fine. The calibration checks with coins worked fine. I don't see the exact same one there anymore, but I doubt there's much difference. Search jewelers scale or pocket scale and options show up that look really similar. I do mainly use measuring spoons since I have a set of "pourfect" brand ones where volume measurements weighed out correctly in recipes where weight and volume were both given. I like having both options though since it just makes baking easier to have whichever set of tools an author assumes, and the scale is a tiny 3"x4" so storage isn't a problem.

Linnea L. July 15, 2016

Besides the German baking guru, the Bouchon Bakery cookbook has measurements in the tenth of grams. I'm not near my cookbooks, so I don't remember what scale is recommended, though I have successfully made many many of the recipes without being quite that precise.

Windischgirl July 15, 2016

Just read an article in the NYT about geeking out on precision (they were focused on coffee), and they recommended this scale, which is precise to 0.01 grams. It costs $60.
http://www.hario.jp/seihin/productgroup.php?group=VST-2000B

IMHO, as a bread baker, your flour/water/salt ratios need to be precise. Yeast? Not so much. Given proper time and temperature, you can get good results with a yeast water, which would be the equivalent of less than a pinch of yeast per loaf of bread. Most recipes have too much yeast rather than too little.

On the other hand, I can fully appreciate the desire to emulate your bread guru....baking has let me channel my perfectionistic tendencies in a tasty way :-). My scale is my third fav kitchen item (after the Danish dough whisk and the DLX...)

caninechef July 15, 2016

As someone in an industry that involves chemical weighing, sometimes on fairly small scale, I find it hard to believe that anyone in a kitchen environment is going to be accurate to .01 grams, and probably not with a scale costing $60. I may be deficient in imagination but I doubt anything in cooking can not survive at a +/- gram level of precision.

Susan W. July 14, 2016

I missed the fractions of a gram. Salter will not do that. I think you'd need a pharmacist's scale to get that. Of course, now I'm dying to know why you would need that.

Nadia H. July 15, 2016

You might be right about the pharmacist scale, I was hoping to get away with a cheaper solution. Why I need this? Nothing illegal :-) To weigh active dry yeast and other ingredients for bread baking, I am doing more and more recipes from a German bread baking guru who uses fresh yeast which I cannot find so I need to convert everything to dry yeast, which generally works fine but the amounts are tiny. All the other amounts in his recipes are very small and very precise too so the Oxo just won't do here. German precision! I just interviewed him for my blog if you are interested.

Susan W. July 15, 2016

Something illicit did cross my mind briefly. ;-)

I would like to read that interview. That sort of precision is fascinating to the ocd side of my personality. I don't see your blog listed on your profile. Is it your user name?

SKK July 14, 2016

The Oxo is a great scale and I have had no problems with it. It is very precise.

Smaug July 14, 2016

It is a great scale, but it won't do fractions of a gram.

Susan W. July 14, 2016

I have a Salter and love it. It easily switches from oz/lbs to grams etc. I test it often with the penny, nickle, dime trick and it's always spot on. I think it was Alton Brown who recommended it. I've had it for 6-7 years, so not sure how it measures up to the newest and brightest.

Smaug July 14, 2016

You may need to try laboratory supply companies- the Oxo is about as precise as kitchen scales get.

Recommended precision scale?

17 Comments

Popular on Food52