I’m a new baker and am wondering what the best way would be to start working with weight measurements instead of my ingrained cups/spoons reference point after six decades of thinking that way. I have a digital kitchen scale that measures in grams so is it just a matter of knowing the weight of the vessels I’m using and then doing the math? Any tricks to make it easier? Or is that just the way you do it?
Water is standard at 236g per cup.
Flour is a tad more tricky and it can vary but you’re looking at around 120g per cup.
Start with that and with a little trial and error plus starting to follow recipes that have been done by weight you’ll begin to get used to weighing.
Some recipes give cups and weight so when you see this, although still not perfect, you can use it as a guide.
Scales do tare out so for larger quantities like flour and water that will be the best way so you’re only weighing the ingredients. Many scales won’t cope with smaller quantities like yeast or salt, unless they measure to the 0.1g, so best method is not to tare out and just do the math.
1 tsp salt = 5.69g
1 tablespoon oil is about 14g
Type into google something like “convert 1 cup flour to grams” and you’ll get a result from Traditional Oven. Great website. I always use that one if I need to convert from volume to grams.
What makes it even more annoying is in Australia we use metric cups which are 250mls which happens to be 250g of water (which has a density of 1 gram per cubic centimetre) which is the beauty of metric! So you have to watch carefully where the recipe comes from. 
Also I work on 140g flour per cup because obviously it’s less dense than water. I’ve seen a cup of flour defined as anything from 135g to 150g.
This is just another reason why I really dislike recipes defined as cups and spoons etc… quite aside from the fact it depends on how packed down the material in the cup is.
Buy a scale that has various modes to choose from. i.e. grams, ounces, etc.
David check out this https://www.aqua-calc.com/calculate/food-volume-to-weight/substance/whole-blank-brown-blank-sesame-blank-seeds-coma-and-blank-upc-column--blank-039978034380 and bookmark for future reference.
Whenever I get any grain I mill it and note the weight in grams for a (spooned in cup) it “kind of” helps in converting the volume recipes to weight. Frankly using volume measurements seems to be a recipe for failure(no pun intended) or at minimum a less than perfect loaf. I have also weighed just about everything I use but I’ll admit it may be a bit obsessive.
I also weighed all of my containers and dishes so it isn’t necessary to tare each time I weigh something out.
Good luck on your journey.
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Thanks for all the reply’s and great resources! I think I’m on my way to working like a true European! Now I just have to perfect my technique for getting my proofed loaves into the cloche without buggering them up.
Haha. takes practice I still screw up once in a while.