Make Baking Easier With Reverse Taring
Measuring ingredients by weight is much more accurate and reproducible than measuring ingredients by volume. This is especially useful during baking, which is more dependent on chemical reactions than simple cooking.
Weighing ingredients is easy: just place the container on the scale, tare the scale, then scoop or pour the ingredient into the container until you reach the desired weight. Pour it into a bowl, repeat with the remaining ingredients. It’s simple enough, but there is a new weighing method in chat – via TikTok, of course – and it can be a little more elegant than the “regular” method.
This is called “reverse taring,” and it is extremely effective, especially if – like our senior health editor Beth Skwarecki – you are the kind of person who hates taking an extra bowl as a weighing container. Instead of putting the bowl on a scale, taring and then weighing the ingredient in that bowl, you put the ingredient on the scale (in the original container or package), tare the ingredient, then add the ingredient directly to the mixing bowl until you reach negative your target weight values. (For example, if you want 100 grams of flour, you must pour or scoop flour into the bowl directly from the flour bag until the scale reads “-100 g”.)
To be honest, the chemist inside me (who is mostly dead) was a little intimidated by this method at first. I learned that weigh anything right in your reaction vessel – the forbidden practice, even before I was able to bring to orgasm , but we make cakes, not OLED. When I told Beth about this, who is much more rigorous from a scientific point of view than me in her day to day life, she pointed out that you can prevent overweight by cleverly using spoons: “When I do it with yogurt, I scoop up yogurt. into a spoon, look at the scale, and then if I need to add some yogurt back to the container, I do it, ”she explained to me via Slack.
Why not just put your mixing bowl right on the scale instead of doing all these things with inverse numbers? Well, sometimes it just isn’t possible to put the reaction vessel directly on the balance, especially if it’s attached to a stationary mixer. Beth and A.A. Newton (who also specialized in chemistry and baked a lot more than me) discussed this detail on Slack even before I logged in this morning, and noted a few good points:
Beth: Oh, I love to do this [reverse tare], I bought my scale on purpose because it can do it (my old ones can’t). Remember the commenters will say BUT YOU CAN JUST WEIGH THE THING IN WHICH YOU INSERT.
AA: Yes, you can, but this method is just as simple and works in 100% of cases, and not in 90% ????? (here the use of a stationary mixer is considered 10%).
Beth: stand mixer, blender, pot on stove, large bowl too big to fit on scale.
AA: this is at least 40% !!!! yes i make up the numbers !!!
Actual percentages aside, I was captivated by their discussion. It might run counter to my mostly dormant chemist instincts, but it’s a good method, especially if, like Beth, you “don’t like to use an extra bowl” out of “laziness.” (Beth is not lazy. Beth is effective .)