That works for some recipes, but for bread precise is better. I'm astonished when I read bread recipes that casually ask for 2 cups of flour (which could be wildly different amounts).
Looking through your comments, your spelling indicates you might be from a Commonwealth country, which means you might not be familiar with the fact that a "cup" is a standardized measurement in the US.
Yes but it's a measure of _volume_, whereas flour is best measured by _weight_. Any volume measurement of flour can vary wildly depending on many factors, such as how densely packed it is.
King Arthur Flour have a short video[0] demonstrating the wildly different weight measurements from measuring a "cup" (the same cup size across samples).
Measuring liquids by volume is totally fine because you generally won't get a large difference between two different cups of water (although I still generally measure that by weight as a personal preference).
But that doesn't work. The chart states that 1 cup of 00 flour is 116g which is simply not true. It _might_ be 116g, but it could also be 200g (!). Volume measurement is simply not suitable for baking.
For things like sauces or marinades, you use a much smaller amount, and approximate is generally fine.
Well yes, but it's a matter of perspective I think. Is it the amount that the recipe author used? Maybe, maybe not. But is it the amount you used the last dozen times you used this recipe? Of course, as long as your chart hasn't changed.
To be clear, I'm not disagreeing with your general premise, everything would be much easier if all recipes used weights for powder-like-ingredients. But recipes that actually have weights listed are few and far between, I find.
There is no (serious) baker that use volume for flour. If the recipe uses volume, it is flawed and you should find another recipe.
Every recipe on King Arthur that you linked has weights.
I realize how I sound, but there is a very big difference in a couple of percentages of flour, and you'd definitely mess up a beginner with the difference with the amount of flour.
The issue is that flour is quite compressible. So if you've opened a fresh bag and scooped out a cup from the top, you'll get quite a different amount than if you dig in the cup and compress the flour against the side of the bag.
It's not like scooping out rice or sugar, where a cup is a cup, assuming you're careful to use a measuring cup and fill it exactly level.
I'm not sure of the exact error margins (there is research on these things though if you care to look) but at a guess I'd say you should expect 15% error margins on scooping white flour even if you're extremely careful to fill the measuring scoop to the same level each time. Probably a bit less on heavier flours.
Note, I run a bakery, although I'm not a baker myself. But I am the one focused on making sure we have repeatable processes, as much as that's possible for sourdough!
Volume measurements are extremely innacurate and should be avoided for pretty much everything in baking, except maybe water. Not a big deal if you're baking at home - bread with +-15% flour will be totally edible - but if you want repeatable bread quality, use a scales with accuracy to 0.1g. You can buy one for $20 that's good enough for home use.
If you're going to weigh even one thing, weigh the salt. Small variations can have a big effect on yeast activity and final bread flavor. Volume measurements of salt are not at all accurate because crystal sizes vary a lot. People assume (even some bakers that I've met!) that salt is just added to bread for flavor, but it's more like a chemical reaction rate control dial, and you need to be very accurate in how much you turn that dial.
Sure, but in practice people don't use measuring cups all that precisely a lot of the time. Specifying a weight forces people to bust out the scale and pay attention.
You don't need to get that precise to make bread. I've made bread successfully all the time with volume measurements, it's not like the recipes are that finicky.
It's not that you can't, it's just that it's harder to get consistent results. Switching to weight measurements is the first advice I give to any friends who are struggling with making bread.
You can be wildly off in baking and produce an edible, enjoyable product. Especially if you have a sense of how to adjust the consistency of what you're mixing and can adjust baking times.
But-- if you use weight measurements and attend to precision, you'll have to adjust a lot less and you'll come much closer to the best possible output.
