One cup, many weights
September 1, 2024 by DarcieOne of our Members recently emailed us a question that has likely been pondered by bakers ever since the kitchen scale was invented: just how much does a cup of flour weigh? While I have extolled the virtues of weighing ingredients before, I did not focus on the weight of flour specifically, although it is arguably the most critical weight for baking. There are some ingredients for which weight is fairly standard: almost everyone agrees that a cup of granulated sugar weighs 7 ounces/200 grams. One cup of chocolate chips almost always clocks in at 6 ounces/170 grams, and a cup of honey will generally be 12 ounces/336 grams. When you get to other liquids, things start to vary slightly, and when it comes to flour, all bets are off. King Arthur Baking’s Ingredient Weight Chart lists 4.25 ounces/120 grams for one cup of all-purpose flour. America’s Test Kitchen, on the other hand, says that a cup of flour weighs 5 ounces/140 grams. That is a significant difference in a bread recipe that uses four or more cups of flour! So what gives with the discrepancies?
One thing you will note about the ingredients that have static weight measures is that they do not compact. That is to say, if you pour granulated sugar into a measuring cup, you are not going to be able to cram in much more by tapping the cup on the counter or pressing down on the sugar. The same goes double for liquids – they do not compress in the slightest except under extreme pressures (Hydraulics 101). On the other hand, a cup of flour, whether wheat, oat, rye, or another grain, can be significantly compacted just by tapping the measuring cup on the counter. Anyone who has filled a container with flour has experienced this phenomenon: when you pour the flour into your storage vessel it takes up more room than it did in the bag. Give the container a few gentle bumps and the flour settles right in.
Therefore when converting a volumetric measure of flour to a weight measure, the results depend on how the flour is added to the measuring cup. Some bakers use the spoon-and-sweep method. This means they will use a spoon or scoop to take the flour from its storage container and add it to the measuring cup until the center is piled higher than the rim. They then level the flour using a flat surface such as the back of a knife. Other bakers prefer the scoop-and-sweep (aka dip-and-sweep) method, where the measuring cup is dipped directly into the flour and any excess above the rim is leveled in the same way as the former method. Spoon-and-sweep will yield around 4.5 ounces/125 grams of all-purpose flour. The scoop-and-sweep method will result in around 5 ounces/140 grams per cup. Both methods depend somewhat on how the flour has been placed into its storage container. If the flour was crammed in, it will weigh more (especially using the scoop-and-sweep method) than if the flour has been fluffed up prior to measuring. If you sift the flour before spooning into a measuring cup, it will weigh even less.
Another factor that affects the weight of the flour is the grinding method. Most all-purpose flour today is milled using stainless steel rollers which results in a fairly fine texture. Stone-milled flour will have a coarser texture and therefore it will weigh less per cup because the larger, more irregular grains do not compact as much. Impact-milled flour (a rarity) will be very fine and weigh more per cup. The type of flour also plays a role. Cake flour, which is made from low-protein wheat, weighs less (generally 4 ounces/112 grams per cup) than all-purpose or bread flour, which are both milled from high-protein wheat. Whole wheat flour is coarser and weighs less than all-purpose.
So what is a baker to do when a recipe does not provide a weight measure? If the recipe is in a cookbook, the first thing to do is to read the book’s introduction. The author will often explain how he or she measures flour which will allow you to infer an approximate weight. The same goes for recipe websites or blogs: the writer may have a pinned post or guide where she explains her technique. You may need to do a little trial and error to determine the sweet spot for a particular author, but once you find a measurement that works, be sure to write it down! If the recipe is from a friend or family member, ask them how they measure the flour, or better yet, make the recipe with them. That’s how I learned how my grandmother measured flour (scoop-and-sweep).
If I am unable to find an explanation, I have learned that using 4.5 ounces/125 grams for all-purpose flour is a good starting point. If the recipe calls for sifted flour, I will use 4 ounces/120 grams per cup. I try to err on the side of using too little flour because you can usually add more if the batter or dough doesn’t look right, but it’s impossible to remove any once you have mixed everything together. Most importantly, don’t let uncertainty about weights keep you from baking! Although you might have a dud once in a while, recipes are generally more forgiving than you might think. Start on the lower end of the weight scale and use the descriptions in the recipe to guide you. If it says to scoop a cake batter into the pan and then level it, that means the batter should be fairly stiff. If your batter is runny, add more flour. If the dough is really sticky and the recipe says it should be smooth, that’s another sign to add more.
Finally, don’t let perfection become the enemy of good. Even a less-than-perfect homemade cookie is going to be better than most commercially-produced cookies at the grocery store. Also, you can usually salvage something even when disaster strikes. Last week I had a major failure with a chocoflan that didn’t hold its shape. The custard flopped over and broke apart, and the cake base wasn’t much better. I scooped up the chunks of custard and cake, chucked them into a bowl, and rebranded it as a trifle. It may have looked frightful, but it still tasted great.
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