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Unpopular opinion: weighing flour changed my sourdough more than any starter trick
I spent about 8 months scooping flour straight from the bag with a measuring cup and my loaves kept coming out dense in the middle no matter what I did with my starter. Then a baker at a class in Portland handed me a $12 kitchen scale and said to just weigh everything in grams, and the very first loaf after that actually had an open crumb. Same flour, same starter, same oven, the only thing that changed was 120 grams by weight instead of "one cup" that could swing 30 grams either way depending on how packed it was. I'm not saying scoops can't work but I finally get why my grandma's recipes always said "sifted" first. Has anyone else made the switch and noticed it right away, or did it take a few bakes for you?
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ray_burns29d ago
How packed was the cup though? That's the thing nobody talks about. I weighed the same "one cup" of flour five times from the same bag and got anywhere from 118 to 148 grams depending on how deep I dug. So you weren't just off by a little, you were basically baking a different recipe every time. Did the open crumb show up on bake one, or did you have to dial in your water too once you knew the real flour weight? Because if your scoop was running heavy, your dough was way drier than you thought, and fixing the flour number alone would change everything.
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