Why I Use the Metric System
A lot of American home bakers are turned off when they see a recipe written in grams. I get it, we don't use grams commonly in the US, but let me convince you otherwise.
First of all, weighing your ingredients, whether in grams or ounces, is MUCH MORE PRECISE than using measuring cups. Let me explain: measuring cups measure by volume--whatever fits in the cup is what is measured. The problem with that is that means depending on how densely packed your ingredients are, you can measure different amounts. Now you might think it's a negligible difference, but for some ingredients, it really isn't. In fact, if you weigh a cup of flour, its weight can vary significantly depending on how you got the flour in the cup. For example, if you scoop the flour with your measuring cup right out of the container and level it, you'll end up with around 160g of flour. If you spoon and level, you get something around or under 120g. This is a difference of 1/3 of a cup. Weighing 120g of flour as1cup for ensures you have the same amount of flour every time you bake. This means that your baking will be consistent.
Now that I have hopefully convinced you with the math, you might still be thinking it's more work to weigh your ingredients. In fact, it's the opposite. Your process of baking will be faster and more efficient because you don't have to measure each ingredient with a different cup (liquid and dry). All you do is put your mixing bowl on the scale, tare it (this button subtracts the weight of the bowl), and add your ingredient. What I do is pour the ingredient directly into the bowl in small increments until it reaches the weight. After each ingredient is added, you can tare the bowl and its contents, making it really easy. Now if you're thinking "how will I know how much everything weighs," don't worry. Many websites and cookbooks give both weight measurements and volume. For example, I love King Arthur Flour and Cook's Illustrated recipes because of that. Also, after just a little bit of practice, you start to memorize the weight of ingredients. Now I can look at a recipe without weight measurements and I can still measure in grams with a few simple calculations. If you're wondering why I use grams instead of ounces, it's because ounces can get confusing because they turn into pounds. Grams are easy to calculate in your head, and they are more precise. However, my scale (and most scales) weighs in Metric and US so I still use cookbooks and recipes like Cooks Illustrated with only US weight. I just don't change recipes written in volume into ounces because that's much trickier than grams. Even if you don't use grams, some ingredients are always measured in weight in the US. For example, wouldn't you like to add 4 oz of chocolate to your cake instead of just eyeballing it?
Also, a decent digital scale is available online for about $10 (below is the link to the one I use,) and that is much cheaper than measuring cups.
I hope I've convinced you to switch to weight measurements. It's so much easier!
