For Mary B - weighing ingredients and accuracy.
Weighing ingredients (liquid or dry) is not only more accurate but more
repeatable than cup measures but is that important in the context of
breadbaking? If you make a bread recipe on 2 separate occasions, weighing
your ingredients with absolute precision, there will still be differences in
the dough due to several variables, some of which are -
Differences between batches of nominally identical flour e.g. gluten content,
moisture content, fineness of grind, age.
Atmospheric temperature, pressure and, most important, humidity.
Rising times - two successive batches of the same recipe seldom rise in
exactly equal time and a long rise will give a different flavour and texture
from a short rise.
Oven temperature - unless you have a digitally controlled oven it is
difficult to repeat an oven setting within a variation of 5 degees C and many
oven thermostats will cycle around a range of temperatures of 20 - 25 or even
30 C.
The other breadbakers out there can doubtless list other variables but the
important thing to recognise is that these inevitable variations affect the
character of the dough MUCH more (an order of magnitude) than a difference
of, for example, .05 ounces of flour so such an accuracy is superfluous for
breadbaking (for all cookery in my opinion) and not worth paying extra to
obtain.
The weight/cups argument often arouses strong feelings in cooks and I'm
looking forward to seeing other list members' contributions.
John Wright
Yorkshire, England