This Is The Biggest Baking Mistake You're Making, According To Paul Hollywood

As one of the faces of baking on television, you would expect Paul Hollywood to be on the receiving end of lots of requests for tips and advice. And while he did not give a number, Hollywood did admit to the Great British Food Awards that lots of the people who ask him for advice share the same issue of failing to weigh their ingredients properly. "My first piece of advice is to use digital scales," he emphasizes. "You simply can't be accurate with balance scales."

It is a similar piece of advice as given by MasterClass. Digital scales offer more accurate readings of the amount placed upon them than analog ones. The reason for this, Lifehacker explains, is that analog scales measure using springs while digital ones rely on sensors. The springs are more prone to wearing away due to use, meaning that even if analog scales are initially accurate, they become less so over time.

When it comes to baking, it is impossible to overstate how important it is to properly weigh your ingredients, hence why it forms the basis of Paul Hollywood's first piece of baking advice.
Food Bloggers of Canada devoted a whole piece explaining why the most important tool in a baker's kitchen is not the stand mixer, but the scale. This is because the art of baking has a basis in chemistry, namely the chemical reactions you induce by mixing ingredients together.

To graphically illustrate the changes that slight differences can inspire, the site presents three types of bacon whiskey apple cookies. The cookie with a quarter of a cup of butter and one egg was hard and crispy, the one with half a cup of butter and one egg was crispy yet chewy, and the one with half a cup of butter and two eggs finished with a cakey texture. While those differences may not seem the worst in the world, they still indicate how a slight slip-up can radically alter the desert you intended to prepare. To reduce such space for variation, you really need the most accurate scale possible, which is the digital scale.