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Balance Pan

Mike Avery <mavery@mail.otherwhen.com>
Sun, 05 Mar 2006 12:55:24 -0700
v106.n010.9
Steven Leof wrote:
>I use a Weylux which is old-fashioned English balance scale, cast 
>iron with removable brass pans. I have two sets of weights ranging 
>from 1/4 oz to 2 lbs and 5 grams to 1 kilo. The scale is reliable, 
>shouldn't wear out and should be available at most good kitchen 
>shops. In London it can be found at David Mellor and Divertimenti.


One of the things I like about bakers balance scales is that they are 
very rugged, and they are designed so you can scale dough on 
them.  With digital scales, I would not want to cut a ball of dough 
in half on the scales.... they wouldn't survive that very 
often.  With a balance pan, there is no problem doing this.

Also, while I use digital scales a lot, I find many bakers become 
digitally obsessed.  Yes, your scales are accurate to 2 grams.  But, 
when your recipe calls for 1,800 grams of flour and 1,200 grams of 
water, even being within 25 to 50 grams is probably close enough for 
the home baker.  The bread will come out fine.  But.... the digits 
are there... glowing at you.... demanding you be precise.

When I weigh yeast, I want to be right on as a small error there can 
be pretty significant.  But for the larger quantity ingredients, no, 
you don't need to be within .1 grams, or even 10 or 20 grams.  And 
the bread will still be fine.

When I was teaching my part time employees to scale dough, I always 
had to spend a lot of time telling them, "When you use the digital 
scales, being within 10 grams on a loaf of bread is good enough.  You 
don't have to be spot on."  It took them time to accept 
this.  Usually we had to weigh a number of finished loaves to show 
them that we were always at, or above, the state weight, and being 10 
grams under on the dough was OK.  And that it was a LOT faster to get 
within 10 grams than to try to be right on every time.

With balance pans, we made our own counter weights.  We used a lot of 
5lb bottles of honey, and we were annoyed at the thought of throwing 
them away (they were a kind of plastic that we can't recycle 
locally). We cut some up into scoops to measure ingredients.  And 
still had a lot.  None of us went fishing, so we couldn't use them to 
float lines. And then... we realized we could fill them with salt to 
the weights of our loaves.  So, we peeled off the labels, put masking 
tape on the bottles, and put the bottles and caps on the digital 
scales.  Then we added salt until they weighed what we needed, capped 
the bottles, and wrote the sort of loaf it was for on the 
tape.  "Kaiser roll 125 grams" "1.5lb loaf" "1.75 lb loaf" and so on.

Mike