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Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, especially since the density of flour varies. All the home bakers I know either weigh their flour, or eyeball it like I do and live with the imprecision.

I'd just let the flour mound over the top of the cup by a bit to make up for the tablespoons. ;-)

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Agreed - eyeballing it (or volume measurement for that matter) is good enough for the vast majority of baking recipes. I have made some finicky recipes in my day, but generally you will not need the precision of measuring by weight. For some reason people online hype up how exact you "need" to be when baking, but it's just not true. Hilariously, people also act like you can just completely wing it with no precision at all when cooking on the stove, and that also isn't true. Both forms of cooking benefit from some measurements and consistency, but you don't have to go too crazy with it.

> live with the imprecision

Exactly that. In a restaurant, you're really pressured to make it the same each time.

At home: Who cares? It's good that it's different every time.

I hate it when my cooking comes out different every time. Reproducible results are super important even at home, imo.

A scale's cheap and if it's in a situation where accuracy matters, I use it if the measurements are given or consult a standard conversion. And as someone in the US I tend to use grams for the purpose to avoid faffing with a combination of units. And I don't even mind at all using US Imperial for many things on a day-to-day basis,

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