Have you seen the new My Weigh KD-8000?

[Pete-zza]

P.S.  Also, Pete, I know your process generally calls for disolving salt in water, dispersing yeast into flour in a couple of steps.  Any reason you couldn't just put all the ingredients into the bowl and mix/knead with the Kitchenaid?  Sure would be more convenient and faster than adding steps as November noted.

Jah,

I like to keep the salt and yeast apart from each other as much as I can, so I add the yeast (most often IDY) to the flour where it is buffered from the salt/water "brine". I could also add the salt to the flour but I like to improve its dispersion by adding it to the water rather than to the flour. Pizza operators with good commercial mixers usually put the water in the mixer bowl first, add the salt (without stirring), then the flour, and finally the yeast (assuming it is IDY or fresh yeast). Then everything is mixed and kneaded. Sometimes the salt is added to the flour rather than to the water in the mixer bowl. I assume that a commercial mixer does this kind of mixing and kneading better than my KitchenAid mixer with a C-hook.

I believe the standard Neapolitan dough method is to add the water to the mixer bowl, dissolve the salt in the water, add the yeast (usually fresh yeast) to the "brine", and then add the flour. If the salt is not dissolved first in the water before adding the yeast, the salt can impair yeast performance by drawing moisture from the yeast cells. 

I imagine that you should be able to come fairly close to replicating my dough making sequencing of ingredients (and the Neapolitan one as well) using the tare and baker's percents features of the KD-8000. However, my typical yeast levels are sometimes too low to register on the KD-8000 scale. Otherwise, you may find that just throwing everything in the bowl together will meet your needs.

Peter

[November]

Zero scale
Weigh bowl and press Tare
Weigh flour and press %
Add salt for example up to the proper percentage then press Tare
Add yeast for example up to the proper percentage then press Tare
And so on...and the scale will still be using the 100% calculation from the original flour weighing.

Correct?

I would just press tare after pressing the percent button.  That way you don't see 1xx%, but rather xx%.  Otherwise you have the concept correct.

P.S.  Also, Pete, I know your process generally calls for disolving salt in water, dispersing yeast into flour in a couple of steps.  Any reason you couldn't just put all the ingredients into the bowl and mix/knead with the Kitchenaid?  Sure would be more convenient and faster than adding steps as November noted.

I often dissolve the salt in my water, and being that you have to measure it at some point in the process, I'm not sure why you think it's an added step with regard to weighing.  I always measure my salt, other dry powders or granulated substances (e.g. sugars, milk, if I use any), and yeast separate from my flour because I intend to dissolve them directly in my water.  So I dedicate a small cup for weighing all of my solutes, making my percent based weighing procedure look like the following (tare after steps 1-5):

1) Weigh the flour in a mixing vessel and press the percent button
2) Place a borosilicate glass container on the scale
3) Weigh the water then microwave it to the desired temperature
4) Place the cup on the scale
5) Weigh each solute except the ADY to the desired percentage
6) Add solutes (no ADY) to the water to dissolve completely
7) Measure ADY volumetrically and add to solution
8) After ADY is dissolved add solution to the flour and mix

On step three I actually heat the water to just beyond the desired temperature with a little more water than ultimately desired, so that the water will undergo evaporative cooling while I am measuring the rest of the ingredients, and bring the quantity and temperature of the water down to the desired levels when I'm ready to mix the solution in with the flour.

- red.november

[November]

Peter,

I guess what I was trying to say is that I personally wouldn't buy the new scale simply because it has the baker's percent feature. If I had the new scale, I would perhaps use it the same way as I now use my own scale.

I think it's quite possible you would use the scale differently because of the percent feature.

For those occasional ingredients for which I could not find any data to do conversions, I used a special digital scale (My Weigh 300-Z) capable of weighing small amounts of lightweight ingredients.

I wanted to test it out before saying anything, but because the scale treats the "percentaged" object (ingredient) as a single unit of measure, you can grab an extra decimal place or two of precision by "percenting" 100 or 10 grams of substance.  In percentage mode there is a one-tenths place in the reading, so by percenting a 100 g object at the start, the rest of the things you weigh will have the resolution of a tenth of a gram.  I want to caution that because this scale is not designed to have that level of gradation, the method by which it comes up with the extra decimal place is fuzzy logic which is not as accurate as a scale designed for extra gradation.  However, for non-scientific weighing I think it works quite well.  I measured a quantity of salt that I knew to be 4.8 g.  I used both ways (normal and what I'll call hyperscaling).  The normal method returned 5 g as expected.  The hyperscaling method returned a number that fluttered between 4.7 and 4.8.  Then I restarted with a 10 g object and weighed a 10.3 g object using hyperscaling.  It fluttered much worse but returned a value around 103.1, so I can interpret that as 10.31g.

You wouldn't use this hyperscaling method at NASA, but it seems suitable enough for baking.

- red.november

[Pete-zza]

November,

Now that you have the scale and have explained the features more fully (better than the seller's website), I am sure I would give consideration to the KD-8000 if I needed another scale.

Peter

[November]

Peter,

If someone was looking at it purely from the standpoint of that precision trick (hyperscaling), it would still be cheaper to buy the My Weigh 300-Z in addition to the KD-7000.  However, I'm sure there are many like me who appreciate owning more than one scale, but would rather have just one scale in one place at one time.  As a sub-$100 kitchen scale, you can't beat 80,000 - 800,000 load divisions.

There are a few more things I'd like to point out.  The 10.3 g object referenced above had a weight only known to the first decimal place, so the 10.31 g is perhaps more accurate than the known weight.  I recommend to anyone wanting to do this that they use a known 100.0 or 100.00 gram object, such as a calibration weight.  Using the same scale to measure out a calibration weight is self-defeating.  For best results use at least an ASTM Class 6 weight while weighing, and for re-calibrating the scale use at least an ASTM Class 4 weight.  The calibration weights I use are manufactured by Ohaus.  ASTM Class 6 calibration weights aren't that expensive.  All the 100 g weights I've seen are under $10.  A 5 kg ASTM Class 4 calibration weight is another matter.

- red.november

EDIT: I forgot to mention that if you're an advanced digital scale user, and you're feeling pretty good about your scale, you can do this with any scale that can be re-calibrated.  It just isn't very convenient.  It requires calibrating the scale with a weight that's one magnitude off by the weight the manufacturer indicates should be used.  It's a pain and I wouldn't recommend it, but there you go.

[Blasthoff]

Hello all, I came about this thread during a search on scales a week ago. I  recently became serious about bread baking and I have to say stumbling on to this forum has sparked an interest and I will be returning often and exploring the knowledge contained in here.

Back to the scale issue. I decided to get the KD-8000 with the understanding I would  continue to use my small 500 gram pocket scale for small amounts of yeast and salt. It just can't be expected to have one size fit all over such a broad weight range. However, having both scales now covers any accurate weighing need up to almost 18 lbs. The percentage option makes tweaking or repeating the moisture ratio in dough  about as easy as it can get and more then makes up using a second scale for minute quantities. Everything else about this scale leaves nothing to be desired, seriously.

You can get this scale right now for about $38 from Old Will Knott scales.

[heliman]

This is a really great all round scale for the price (thought the finish is rather rough in certain areas).

I use the KD-8000 together with a small scale that measures .1 of a gram and that supports all my weighing needs.

I have played with the baker's percentage fucntion, but do all my calculations on a spreadsheet beforehand so could probably do without it really.

Overall I give it an 8/10. I am amazed that it has a 30 year warranty. Handy but I will be baking pizzas in the old folks home at that stage so probably won't enjoy that benefit!!!!

Rossco

[Madmax]

Just ordered the KD-7000 yesterday....can't wait to give it a go.  I have been relying on volume mesurements and "feel" of the dough to make my pies.

I also have 5 gallons of Pale Ale that I bottled a few weeks ago, that will be tasty too....

[veloboy]

My scale was in the process of crapping out so I ordered the KD 8000. Mr UPS man dropped it off today. This scale rocks the Casbah. The bakers percentage feature does work great and is pretty damn accurate for the few little tests I've done. Anyhow, just wanted to share my two cents.

[mayersob]

After reading all the posts I am still confused. Will the KD-8000 tare each ingredient in the % mode without emptying the bowl. I would like be able to add all the ingredients using my 6quart kitchen aid bowl from scale to mixer.