How to develop a recipe, one change at a time

Good recipes are rarely written; they are tested into shape. Here is how to scale one properly, compare doughs with baker's percentages, and keep track of what each batch taught you.

Weigh what you can

Grams are the most repeatable measure in a kitchen. A cup of flour can vary by a fifth depending on how it is filled; 180 g is always 180 g. Recipe Lab converts between grams, ounces and pounds, and between millilitres, spoons and cups, but never across the two, because that would mean guessing a density.

Scale to what you actually have

Doubling is easy. The awkward cases are "I need 30 cookies, not 12" and "I only have 100 g of chocolate". Tell Recipe Lab either one and it works out the multiplier and scales everything else to match. The recipe you wrote stays as it was; scaling is only a view.

Use baker's percentages for doughs

Write every ingredient as a share of the flour by weight, with flour at 100%. A bread at 70% water and 2% salt is the same bread at any size, and two recipes can be compared at a glance. Turn on Baker's % in the Ingredients card; only weighed ingredients get a percentage.

Change one thing per batch

If you change the sugar and the oven temperature together, you cannot tell which made the difference. Before changing the formula, press New version so the old one is kept, change one thing, and log the batch: what you changed, scores for taste, texture, aroma and appearance, and what to try next. The Versions tab then shows exactly what differs between any two versions, ingredient by ingredient.

Cook from the screen

Cook mode shows one step at a time in large type, ticks off ingredients as you gather them, keeps the screen awake, and turns any time in the method, like "bake 11–13 minutes", into a timer you can start with one tap.

Frequently asked questions

Why can't Recipe Lab turn cups into grams?

Because it depends on the ingredient and how the cup is filled: a cup of flour can weigh anywhere from about 120 to 150 grams. Converting would put a guess into every figure after it, so weights and volumes are kept apart.

What is a baker's percentage?

Each ingredient as a percentage of the flour by weight, with flour at 100%. A dough at 70% water has 70 g of water for every 100 g of flour, whatever the batch size.

Where are my recipes kept?

In your browser on this device, on app.toolsfully.com where no advertising or analytics scripts run. Back up to a file to move them or keep them safe.