Short answer: no.

Longer answer: probably not.

Did your grandmother bake with a scale? No! My grandmother was the best baker I know, and she never used a scale. Well, outside of her time living in Germany, and when her recipes that called for four pounds of flour, but other than that, she always measured in cups.

Perhaps this needs an even longer answer.

Professional baker, teacher and cookbook author Nick Malgieri has famously refused to included weight measurements in his books because most home bakers don't have a scale and measure by cups. Professional baker, teacher and cookbook author Rose Levy Berenbaum always includes measurements by cups, ounces and grams. She also included a table of volume to weight conversions for many baking ingredients; I use these tables to convert my American measurements into metric, and vice versa.

Much of the world measures dry ingredients, such as flour and nuts, by weight, because it's more accurate. Personally, I find it easier to bake by weight, and wouldn't mind if the rest of the US woke up one morning and replaced every measuring cups with a scale. And switched to the metric system.

Scales are straightforward. Set a bowl onto the scale, reset it to 0 (called zeroing out or taring), then spoon in or slowly pour the ingredient into the bowl. To add the next ingredient, zero out and add the next ingredient. The bowl can be anything, even the food processor work bowl with the un-ground nuts measured directly. Although a digital scale makes it easy to obsess over every gram or fraction of an ounce, my personal tolerance is within two to five grams. There is something very satisfying about casually dropping in a partial stick of butter or handful of chocolate pieces and hitting the exact weight called for.

The accuracy comes from the density of the ingredients. A cup of sifted flour is less dense and weighs less than a cup of flour straight from the bag (about 4 ounces compared to 5); therefore, recipes are very specific about sifting before or after measuring. Sifting and then measuring is so inconvenient that I'd rather do the math and measure 3/4 cup unsifted flour instead of 1 cup of sifted flour. When measuring by weight, you can measure first and sift later; the 4 ounces of sifted flour will weigh the same after it's sifted.

How you measure with a cup also affects how much flour or what have you goes into the cup. That's why most cookbooks have a section about how to measure. The usual methods are dip and sweep (hard to do with a small bag of corn meal) and spoon and sweep (put a piece of wax paper down to catch the excess); dip and sweep gets more flour into the cup. Often, home cooks use the dip and press or dip and shake methods, which gets even more flour into the cup. Because cooking and baking is about the ratio of each ingredient to another, too much of any ingredient can throw the recipe off.

Scales help with portioning. Bread rolls and loves are more uniform if you can weigh the full batch of dough and weigh each loaf or roll to get consistent sizes.

Scales don't need to be washed either, because all ingredients are weighed in a bowl or on wax paper. One tool replaces four (or more, if you own multiple sets of dry measures). The one tool does cost more than the other four.

Kitchen scales are not accurate enough for measuring less than a tablespoon of most dry ingredients. German and British recipes still specify teaspoons and tablespoons for small amounts ingredients like salt and baking powder. Recipes for professionals will measure even these small amounts by weight. This is why I have a scientific scale that can measure to 0.1 gram. I use it only for baking from cookbooks written for professional chefs, where everything, even the baking powder, is measured by weight. When measuring 3 grams of something, being off by a gram is quite a lot, really.

However, even the cheapest scale on Amazon is still twice the price of a set of measuring cups, and you'll still need a liquid measuring cup and set of measuring spoons. They take up more space. The more accurate digital scales need batteries or an outlet.

The big question is, will it make you a better baker?

Maybe. If your biggest problem is measuring dry ingredients accurately. But then it would seem that learning to measure accurately (dip and sweep! dip and sweep!) is just as effective and cheaper.

You need a scale if you bake from recipes that measure by weight, either grams or ounces. These would be:

• Professional bakers, making six layers of cake in a 20-quart mixer that stands on the floor.
• Non-Americans, baking from non-American recipes, living in countries where every kitchen has a scale.
• American amateurs who bake from professional or non-American recipes.
• Anyone overly concerned with exactitude.
• Bakers practicing for the eventual conversion to the metric system.

If you like baking with cups and tablespoons, there's no reason to stop, unless you turn pro or move to Europe. Owning a scale won't make you a better baker. Using a scale can help you understand the ratios that underlie all baking. Reading Shirley Corriher's Bakewise or Mark Ruhlman's Ratio will help even more.

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I have many scales: an Italian balance scale shaped like a ladle that can measure up to 200 grams; my first scale, mechanical and turquoise plastic, bought in Germany to bake my aunt's recipes; the sleek electric model I bought when we renovated the kitchen and is the main one I use; and a very accurate scale for use in laboratories. I also have four sets of measuring cups and four sets of measuring spoons.