Divide and weigh dough into regular pieces


Divide and weigh dough into regular pieces
When you prepare dough for cupcakes in a pastry shop or bakery, at some point you're going to have to divide it, i.e. cut it into small pieces, which should all have the same weight.

Sounds simple enough, but is it really that simple?
11 K 5/5 (14 reviews)
Grade this page:
Keywords for this post:BakingPastryDoughWeighingDividingTipsRegularity
Last modified on: May 30th 2023
For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend
Divide and weigh dough into regular pieces
The most natural way to do this is to place the pile of dough in front of you.


Then take enough dough from it to obtain the desired weight.

Then set this small dough piece aside, and repeat the operation until you reach the end of the initial pile of dough.
It's simple, and it works, of course, but without realizing it you're wasting a lot of time, because you'll have to make the right weight from scratch for each dough piece.

Can you do better?

Yes, and to do that you have to work like bakers do, i.e. cut the dough into squares.
To do this, you first need to roll out the dough roughly on your work surface, pressing it down with your hands, and at the same time giving it a vague square or roughly flat rectangle shape, about 1 to 3 cm thick.



Using a pastry cutter, cut out "columns" from the rectangle...


... which you can then cut into pieces.



Weigh each piece to check its weight, adjust if necessary by removing or adding a small piece of dough, then set it aside before moving on to the next.


You'll find that, at first, the pieces you cut won't be the right weight, but as time goes by, your eye will adjust to the desired weight, and you'll need to adjust the weight less and less.
This way of working (in "columns" and "rows") will enable you to divide the dough more quickly and easily.
It's not essential, but once you've got a piece at the right weight, lay it out in rows and columns too (as in the photo), so you'll know how much you've got at a glance.

To sum up: to divide a dough into several small pieces of the same weight, it's much easier and quicker to form it into a rectangle or square, and cut rows and columns from this rectangle.

Lasts posts
The importance of sieving
The importance of sieving
In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3rd 20256,5433
The grease spray
The grease spray
As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...
August 26th 20255,9425
Cake moulds
Cake moulds
When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25th 20256,1545
Thinning out herbs
Thinning out herbs
If you need to add a long-stemmed herb (tarragon, mint, verbena, thyme, etc.) to a recipe, you'll probably only need the leaves and not the stem, so you'll need to remove the leaves. Leaf removal means keeping only the beautiful leaves, and eliminating the ugly stems and leaves, but how do you do...
August 8th 20254,3285
Add a bay leaf
Add a bay leaf
Bay leaf: small in size, but big in flavor. You'll find it in hundreds of recipes, and it's often added to cooking meat, in a sauce or broth, usually accompanied by other herbs or products. It's a staple of Provençal, Mediterranean and Oriental cuisine, but not the only one. Usually, in a...
July 31th 20254,3575

Other pages you may also like
A few tips for effective kneading at home
A few tips for effective kneading at home
When you have to knead dough for bread or some other recipe, you may well use a food processor or the type of machine known as a stand mixer. The best-known brands are Kenwood and KitchenAid. They are useful tools, but here are a few tips to help you get the best out of them.
June 23th 2021282 K 23.7
The importance of sieving
The importance of sieving
In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3rd 20256,5433
Let's rehabilitate the burger
Let's rehabilitate the burger
The burger is a sandwich that is very fashionable at the moment, and as for all other sandwiches, the worst (often) rubs shoulders with the best (much more rare). In principle, I'm probably not teaching you anything, it's a sandwich made of a small round bun, rather soft, like a sandwich bread,...
April 10th 20219,3604.9
Butter doesn't make you fat, unless you eat too much of it.
Butter doesn't make you fat, unless you eat too much of it.
Whenever I'm discussing cooking and recipes, there is one idea which comes up frequently, like this: "Oh no! But that's got butter in it" (I should add, for the sake of accuracy, that this is something I hear more frequently from women, who are almost all concerned with keeping their figure). ...
March 26th 201244 K4.5
Steam for baking bread
Steam for baking bread
What does steam have to do with bread-making? This is not only a bakers' secret, it is something you might not think of at all: if you make bread and bake it like a cake, you will end up with bread, but pale and with a thick, hard crust – a long way from the golden-brown crusty loaf you had in...
June 16th 2021145 K4.5
Post a comment or question
Posted by:
I am not a leaving thing

Follow this page
If you are interested in this page, you can "follow" it, by entering your email address here. You will then receive a notification immediately each time the page is modified or a new comment is added. Please note that you will need to confirm this following.
I am not a leaving thing
Note: We'll never share your e-mail address with anyone else.
Alternatively: you can subscribe to the mailing list of cooling-ez.com , you will receive a e-mail for each new recipe published on the site.

Back to top of page