Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I need a new kitchen scale. I gave away my old digital one when I moved because the display was really hard to read. I prefer the look of classic scales (no batteries!) but I don't know whether they are as accurate as digital ones. I'm overwhelmed with the options on Amazon, since reviews seem to cover such a wide range - I guess people have very different expectations when it comes to scales?

Anyway, if you have one you love, please tell me what kind it is!

I just bought a cheap one at target a few years ago. It has oz and grams and tare and is digital. It is their store brand.

It is small but seems to do a good job. I can put it away easily so I am not picky about its looks.

agreed, mine was gifted to me but i know it came from target and i think it was their own store brand too. i doubt it was more than $20 or $30. i've had it for well over a decade and while i have had to change the batteries a couple of times, it still works great. it does ounces and grams and then there is a super cool "tare" function where you can set your bowl on top, press "tare" and the scale will "zero out" so then you can add/weigh your ingredient into your bowl.

I have a similar type from IKEA. The tare function is awesome. It is accurate to one gram. It would be difficult to get a analogue scale that accurate.
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20018198/

I've had two digital kitchen scales, one Salter and one Oxo. Both are good scales and I'd recommend either brand. I only had to replace the Salter with the Oxo because I was stupid and melted it on the stove accidentally.

If you like to bake a lot with recipes in weight, I recommend getting a scale with 1 gram increments that has a 11 lbs (5 kg) max. I like the 11 lb max because I can weigh ingredients directly in my mixing bowl as I'm adding them, taring in between. The 1 g increment is more important than a high max weight though because I think it's a necessity to be able to weigh to the gram for any baking recipe in weight (i.e. salt in a bread recipe).

I use a salter one at work all day, every day and it's been wonderful. I also have this cute one at home.

They're both very reliable. Really as long as a scale can do grams and decimals/fractions of ounces and has a tare button it'll be fine.

I had a simple non-electronic one I got at the Bijenkorf in Amsterdam for a few years that worked just fine but wasn't very precise. A couple years ago I splurged for an electronic nutritional scale and I love it. I don't use the nutritional stuff that much (though it was helpful when my midwife was having me track protein - not a vegan specific thing! preggos get equal opportunity protein pressure!), but I like that I can easily switch between metric and English.. I don't love that it defaults to metric, but I can live with that, dividing by 450 to get lbs isn't that hard if I'm too lazy to press the button. Most recipes I have that go by weight are in metric anyway so if it were the other way around I'd probably get annoyed too, because I'm just impossible to please.

http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product ... Qgod9Q8AeA



I find having SOME kind of scale is really important to me, since I noticed that a lot of the European cookbooks I had that had not been Americanized were just not getting used because they tend to measure things by weight that American cookbooks would not.

Thanks for all the input, folks! Still not sure what I'm going to go with but I have some ideas now.

If I do get an analog scale, it would probably be this one: http://www.amazon.com/EatSmart-Precisio ... 6T4GJLL5FU - I actually don't often have to weigh things any more precisely than to the ounce so it might be enough. But I'm going to wait a bit to make sure I'm buying what I really need.

When I started doing the "artisan bread in 5 mins a day" thing, I got a digital scale for around $10 US from Deal Extreme. One silimar to this: http://dx.com/p/portable-1-4-lcd-digita ... 41?item=45

I use it all the time and have had it for 4-5 years. Maybe something like this can be a option while you look for something more schnazzy, then later act as a back up.

I would definitely go digital - and to be able to tare as you go - and a big enough size that you can put a bowl or a plate on it and still read what's going on. I'm converting my recipes from cups & spoons to weight now I've gone "professional" - what A HUGE difference it makes. So much more consistent.

edit: and if you're gonna spend the money and get something, make sure it will fulfill your requirements - even when you're going to want it to do more than you do right now. nothing worse than buying something once, then having to buy again.