My old boss in Cincinnati told me to ditch the scale for bread, and he was dead wrong

About a year ago, I was working at a small bakery and the head baker, this guy named Frank, told me to stop weighing my ingredients for sourdough. He said real bakers just 'feel' the dough and that scales were for beginners. I tried it his way for a solid month, and it was a total disaster. My hydration was all over the place, my loaves were either bricks or soup, and I wasted so much flour. I went back to my $20 digital scale, and my consistency shot right up. That 'feel' thing only works if you've been doing it for 30 years like him. For the rest of us, numbers matter. Has anyone else had a boss or mentor give you advice that just made things worse?

3 comments

3 Comments

amy8582mo ago

Used to think eyeballing it was the pro move until my starter went flat for a week straight. My cheap scale got it back on track by showing me how off my "handful" of flour really was. Some rules are there for a reason, you know?

karenw902mo ago

Totally feel that. My grandma swore by the pinch method for everything, even baking. Her cookies were always a wild card, sometimes perfect, sometimes hockey pucks.

matthewperry1mo agoMost Upvoted

Remember trying to wing it with my starter for months... it was just sad. Finally broke down and got a basic digital scale, the kind that costs like twenty bucks. Turns out my "cup" of flour was sometimes a whole extra ounce heavy, which explains a lot. That little thing showed me I wasn't being artistic, I was just being wrong. Now my loaves actually rise the same way twice, which is all I ever wanted.