As I understand it, the target market is people who will spend a lot of money on a grill and like nice toys - the type of people who shop at places like frontgate.com. The target market by-and-large consider themselves good cooks (at least outdoors), but that does not mean they use a scale; they probably don't bake much if any. They probably have all sorts of nice cookbooks. If they like pizza, maybe they have the A16 cookbook which like just about all the others gives volumetric measurements only. The vast majority of people simply don't scale ingredients. Look how many people come here having never used a scale for making pizza - sure many learn better once they get here, but they have to get here first.
I know what you're saying, Craig, and you're probably right in a lot of ways. In fact, you're talking about someone I know.
But take a trip back in time, to when you first started using a scale and bakers' percents, or when you first understood how much better and easier it was to use a scale instead of measuring cups.
It was a revelation, right?
Knowing what you know now, is there any reason why you would ever choose to measure your dough ingredients by volume rather than weight, as long as you have a scale available to use? How about everyone else? Would y'all ever choose to make pizza dough without a scale if you had one available?
Why or why not?
Similarly, would you put cornmeal in your deep dish dough? Or would you tell someone they should put cornmeal in their deep dish dough? Why or why not? It's almost the same thing.
Regular people need to know that the way they measure ingredients for baked goods is a bad way of measuring, and that it takes more work only to achieve less precise results. But they're never going to know if people like us keep letting it slide.
We can tell them how to do it the right way or we can tell them how to do it the wrong way. If we keep telling them the wrong way, even though we would never consider going back to doing it the wrong way ourselves, they're never gonna learn, and we will have passed on a chance to give them something valuable that no one else will give them.
Bert, please go buy a scale and experience the revelation.
