A Buyer's Guide to Baking Scales

If you are looking for a professional bakery scale, or a scale for home baking, there are many options available to you in today's market. Traditional bakery scales may be mechanical, but there are also many options for digital scales that are more affordable, just as durable, and smaller footprints for the home kitchen.

What Are Baking Scales?

Baking scales are scales used to weigh out ingredients for large batches of baked goods. In commercial applications, a recipe won't say something like "200 cups of flour"! Rather, the ingredients will be portioned out by weight.

Baking scales are often durable, washdown (easy to clean) and offer capacities and resolutions that make sense for the application.

Baking Scale Considerations

When you are looking for a baking scale, the main considerations one should consider are how large your batches will be, the footprint or available space for the scale, measurement units, and if the scale will serve any purpose other than weighing ingredients for baking.

Consideration #1: Weight Capacity

The capacity a typical commercial bakery may need for a bakery scale is usually somewhere between 5 and 10 pounds. The resolution is typically noted in oz resolution. The capacity of the scale can be higher than "needed" as long as the resolution you need is afforded by the capacity. Most scales are not limited to capacity, but the number of "displayed resolutions" per the max capacity. Something that weighs up to a million pounds is possible, but probably "counts by 5s" and not grams.

Consideration #2: Functionality

The most frequently required functionality for a baking scale is going to be it's ability to withstand the kitchen environment - wet, messy, and sometimes bumped into. Aside from this, the main functionality would be it's ability to portion to your recipes, so make sure to review your recipes and see what units of measure and to what total weight you will be compiling your ingredients.

Consideration #3: Baking Units

This is one of the most important factors in deciding whether you want a digital scale or a mechanical bakery scale. Most mechanical scales will have one, if not limited units of measurement... while a digital scale that can withstand the kitchen environment will have many, if not dozens. If you are needing to convert grams to oz, or making big matches from small recipes, it will be nice to have the opportunity to weigh out recipes by cup, or tablespoon in grams, and then multiply that to something like oz. or lb:oz as you scale your production!

Finding Your Next Baking Scale with Summit Measurement

We would love to help you find your next bakery scale. Even if we don't offer the model you are looking for, we may be able to help you find something through our massive network of manufacturers and local dealer partners.

email us at [email protected] to contact us now!