Weights and Measurements

Here is a great question from Tristan about the benefits of weighing your ingredients:

 "I too just purchased your book and am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my starter. I've been reading and watching videos online about natural yeast starters and I'm wondering if you have ever weighed your ingredients to make the growth of your starter more productive? Would they be equals weights of water and flour when feeding my starter? I'm one of those people that would love to eliminate any guess work on my behalf and just use a scale. Thanks for amy information on this (or weights for flour in your other recipes)."

Tristan, thanks for your question!  I'm sure there are others out there wondering the same thing.  Here are my answers:

I chose this photo because this is probably the most
ridiculous use for a food scale I've seen..
Who measures chocolate?! Just eat it already!

Yes, I have weighed my ingredients in the past.  I actually bought a food scale specifically for that purpose.  Many bakers (especially natural yeast/sourdough bakers) swear by weighing ingredients and do all their baking by weight.  Unfortunately for you, math was never a strong point of mine, and all that addition/subtraction stuff made me dread baking.  So, I ditched the scale and went back to measuring volume.  Since most people are not interested in baking with scales, I always formulate my recipes based on volume, not weight.  So no, sadly I do not have weight versions of my recipes for you. 
Another reason that I do not use weight (and that my volume measurements are written to be flexible in the cookbook) is that the quantity of flour you will use in your recipes depends greatly on where you live and the humidity of your region.  I encourage people to become familiar with the consistency of their starter rather than stick to exact measurements.  I have a video posted on my youtube channel that shows you what that consistency should look like. 

However, should you want to try weight measurement, the starter I use in the cookbook is a 100% hydration starter, which means it is equal weight flour and water.  So however many grams of starter you have, you would add equal weight water and flour.
A great place to find recipes that use weight measurements is www.thefreshloaf.com  Just remember that most of the sourdough recipes on that site use countertop starter methods.  Good luck and have fun!