Paul Hollywood Says You Should Be Weighing Your Ingredients - Exclusive
British baking icon Paul Hollywood has an affinity for American baking culture. As Paul Hollywood told Tasting Table in an exclusive interview, he loves doughnuts, New York bagels, apple pie, and more. However, there's one thing that American bakers (particularly home bakers) do that he just doesn't understand: measuring ingredients by volume (with cups, tablespoons, etc.) rather than by weight. "I do find that very odd," said Hollywood. "The whole cup thing took me a while to get used to because I don't understand why. You've got scales out there [so] you can use grams. Just use grams."
While you might think that this is a simple difference between imperial and metric measurements, that's not really the case. "It's just a scale, whether you are weighing a gram, an ounce, a kilo, a cup," Hollywood continued. And even if it were a question of metric versus imperial measures, Hollywood thinks it would be quick for everyone to learn how to measure in grams: "In the U.K., we had to go from ounces back in the '90s and turn [them] into grams. I think grams is easier."
Americans' attachment to cups is often chalked up to the influence of cookbook author Fannie Farmer, whose 1896 cookbook set the standard for American recipes.
Even though volume is the way we've always done things, Hollywood has good reasons for us to ditch the cups and pick up a kitchen scale.
It comes down to precision
Although measuring baking ingredients with cups seems easy, it's also easy to mess up. Inaccurate measurements can mess up your bakes. If you use a liquid measuring cup to measure dry ingredients or a dry cup for liquids, you very likely won't be getting accurate readings. Also, if you don't fluff your flour up before measuring, you might be adding more flour than the recipe calls for because flour compresses during storage. If you just weigh out your ingredients, you don't have to worry about any of this.
Per Paul Hollywood, "There is more room for error when you do it with cups, and grams are more of a precise tool, because baking is a science, and when you're doing science, you have to be accurate." It may take some getting used to, but you'll be rewarded with superior baked goods. He continued, "If you use grams and milliliters, then that's more accurate, and therefore, your baking should improve."
You can watch Paul Hollywood on "The Great American Baking Show: Celebrity Holiday" now on The Roku Channel.