Should You Measure By Weight or Volume? - Stay Gluten Free (2024)

When it comes to gluten free baking, or any kind of baking really, which is better, to measure by weight or volume?

I used to think nothing of this, I didn’t understand the difference and it wasn’t until I got so tired of my baked goods not turning out that I decided that it was important to buckle down and figure it all out.

As you may or may not know a couple of years ago I began to make the shift here on my blog from offering only cups in my recipes to both- cups and grams, with a STRONG emphasis on grams.

Why did I do that? Well, it’s simple, by using a scale to measure by weight I was able to get a more accurate idea of how much flour I was adding to my recipes. Then I was able to really precisely measure my ingredients and get the same exact results time after time.

I can’t tell you enough how much a small $25 investment of a digital scale with a tare feature can make such a big difference in your baking.

Let me rewind the tape one sec. When I first started baking, I’m the girl that bought about 3 different measure cups sets because I wanted to always have a size available without having to wash in the middle of what I was trying to bake. Some cups were deeper than others and that’s when I started to become curious.

I had read articles about this, but I just brushed it off like it was no big deal. But let me tell you IT IS A HUGE DEAL!!

So one day just for fun, I put flour in one of my “deeper” measure in cups and more flour in another one of my larger flatter, more “shallow” measuring cup. They were both 1-cup cups but different shapes.

I filled them both and then weighed them with my scale. I got a different number. In fact, each time I filled them I got a different number. And often my number didn’t even matched the grams for 1 cup on the recipe I was using.

Then you have the fact that gluten free flours are usually a blend and not made up of just one ingredient (like wheat flour). This also changes the weight of a cup by the brand or type of flour you’re using.

A perfect place to illustrate this is the King Arthur Flour weight chart. You will see that 1 cup of the Gluten Free Measure for Measure is 120 grams but 1 cup of the All-Purpose is equal to 156 grams. And when subbing gluten free flour in a recipe that uses wheat flour, 1 cup measures on average between 125-136 grams. Do you see how this could effect your recipes and baked goods.

So in my book when it comes to the battle between whether to measure by weight or volume, I’ll always choose a scale and I hope you do too. Baking takes precise measurement and a scale is the very best way to do that.

But you know, I’ve got your back and if you are a die-hard cups lover, I will almost always supply you with a way to convert each recipe. Especially in my new cookbook. There is a simple chart in the back of the book to help you do this very quickly.

One more thing. In my opinion using a scale is most important for your flour, but I do use it for of all my dry or solid ingredients. I still measure my liquids with cups. I might make that shift sometime but for now this is what is working great.

Lastly, using a scale will also make it easier to clean up. You see, as I mentioned above, if you make sure your scale has a tare feature, it can zero out your mixing bowl as you fill it with each ingredient. This makes adding everything to just one bowl possible. Yay!

So, have I convinced you yet? Let me know what you think and if you already use a scale or still need to get one.

Talk Soon!