My kitchen scale lied to me for 6 months and I never noticed
I got this digital scale back in March to finally weigh my ingredients properly for bread, and I trusted it completely. Last week I baked two loaves with the exact same recipe, same flour, same water temp, and one came out dense while the other was perfect. I weighed a cup of flour on the scale and it said 120 grams, then I went to check the calibration with a nickle like the manual said, 5 grams. It showed 6.4 grams, every single time. So for half a year my doughs were getting different amounts of flour depending on how much I scooped, because the scale was off by nearly 30%. I ordered a new one with a calibration weight included for about 22 bucks. Has anyone else had a measuring tool just silently drift on them, and how did you catch it before ruining a whole batch of cookie dough or cake batter?
I read a thing once about how cheap digital scales use load cells that can get permanently bent if you drop them or press too hard, and after that they just read wrong forever. Even a little bump on the counter can throw them off, so the drift happens slow and you never catch it. Best trick I heard is weighing a few coins or a cup of water every few weeks, since water is 1 gram per milliliter and that stays the same no matter what.