Reddit reviews OXO 11214800 Good Grips 11 Pound Stainless Steel Food Scale with Pull-Out Display,Black,1.2

Serious Eats recommends this one, which has a pull-out display to deal with the problem of large overhanging bowls. I haven't quite felt the need to replace our old standby yet but it does look pretty nice.

No problem, and welcome to the baking club! This is a great first recipe to try because it's super easy, and introduces you to a lot of neat stuff, such as browning butter for enhanced flavor & aroma.

Baking is much more of a science than cooking is (which means that you can actually get really nice, consistent results once you figure out how it all works!), but there are still a lot of little "tribal knowledge" kind of details that you have to pick up along the way, like the brown butter trick & the cooling technique (cool on pan, then cool on rack, THEN eat). Especially in the case of getting the final product right, it's difficult not to be impatient because the final result is right there in front of you, haha!

Here are some tips, if you want to dive further into baking:

• Bakers use full sheets; at home, we half sheets (13" x 18", typically just called a rimmed baking sheet)
  
• Pre-cut parchment sheets are the best thing in the universe (works out to like 12 cents per sheet)
  
• Silpats are like reusable parchment sheets, but I actually don't like them for baking because of the way they affect the dough - I actually really like them for flash-freezing stuff on, so if I want to freeze some cookie dough balls to store for later, they peel right off! Amazon makes their own knockoff set for a third the price
  
• Get yourself a Danish dough hook ($15), it makes manually stirring batters & doughs soooooo easy! Works like magic!
  
• My favorite kitchen tool is this ridiculously expensive spoon ($25), which is 110% worth it because it replaces both a wooden spoon & a spatula; it has the strength of a solid spoon, but with the flexible tip of a spatula, so you can do both jobs at once
  
• If you want to instantly increase your baking game, switch to measuring by weight (not cup size, for example, as a cup of flour can vary a LOT when scooping!) by using a kitchen scale; decent ones are $15, but if you'd like to step up to a better model, this is a newer version of the one I have (does ounces, does grams, removes the weight of the bowl before measuring, and has a pull-out display so you can see the number even with a big bowl on top!)
  
• I use these silicone pot holders to put on my countertops under my hot trays
  
  Regarding baking in general:
  
  
• Stella's book Bravetart is absolutely fantastic to work through, very detailed with lots of good explanations for helping you when you're learning!
  
• Create a solid recipe-storage system, so that you don't lose your "keeper" recipes!
  
• Personally, I focus on finding A+ recipes for my personal recipe collection; these ricotta brown-butter cookies are keepers for sure! I have several "the best" recipes that I've stored over the years, such as pancakes, brownies, chocolate-chip cookies and so on...really next-level stuff that makes baking all worth it!
  
• I do a lot of freezer-based storage for ingredients (like chocolate-chips), raw materials (such as cookie dough), and finish products (such as pre-baked mini-loaves)
  
• Baking is great if you like hardware, as you can branch out into electric stuff (hand mixers, stand mixers, food processors, etc.) & various tools (Twinkie pans, mini-loaf pans, baking steels, etc.), plus it all generally lasts a really long time, not to mention lets you make a ton of stuff with it forever & ever - I make everything from incredible homemade pizza to the best chocolate-chip cookies you've ever had to easy mini baguettes at home!
  
• Baking is also a really great creative outlet; check out the no-knead bread scene sometime, for example
  
  Anyway, feel free to ask questions!

I use the OXO scale. It’s accurate to 1g.


If your SO is getting into baking artisan bread, it would help to have a micro-scale to measure small amounts of ingredients. This one is the one I use but any scale that measures to .01 grams with decent accuracy will work well.

I have a food scale that I love and use for shipping. This is it. I use it 50/50 food/shipping but it works super well, the screen pulls out so you can weigh stuff in boxes easily.

I appreciate that you're trying to help, but please don't assume I've blindly done anything. I have done research. A LOT of research, actually. That's how I ended up with a blood meter instead of any number of other things. My research shows that there is a difference between light nutritional ketosis (.5-1.49mmol) and the optimal levels (1.5-3mmol) for fat loss. I'm always interested in learning if you'd provide links to what you've researched that shows otherwise.

I realize it's merely anecdotal evidence, but two of my housemates who began the ketogenic diet the same time I did measure 2.1mmol and .09mmol when I was at .2mmol, all measurements taken at the same time. The latter is less strict than my first friend and I are.

It is physically impossible to be in ketosis if ones body is not producing ketones or producing too low a count, so just telling me I'm in ketosis isn't helpful and causes me that anxiety you mentioned with a side of frustration to go with it.

I used to use an older scale I had, but about two weeks into the woe, I bought a new scale because the first one was becoming unreliable and would give drastically different weights when weighing the same food a second time.

I had not run across ketones being lower in the morning, so I'll look into that, thanks.

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