Dry ingredient conversions
I have a great recipe for a quick bread that I want to scale up. The original recipe is measured in cups, so naturally I want to convert to grams. I looked on line for the conversion for flour -- and found numbers all over the board! 120, 128, 140, 150. I was shocked at the inconsistency! You would think this matter has been settled!
I then took two measuring cups, and low and behold -- got two vastly different measurements. My trusty one-cup metal measuring cup, which I've had since the beginning of time, gave me 128g of all purpose flour. My new just-purchased-at-restaurant depot one-cup metal measuring cup gave me 155g! Such a difference!!!
Pinterest has some great baking conversion charts for staple ingredients, but they too do not match one another. I am trying to look for a professional source (oooh... maybe I should check King Arthur's site), but most of the posts online are from bakery bloggers, and as I've mentioned -- all over the board.
Any thoughts about this? One cup A.P. flour = how many grams?
There is no standard, because as you've noticed everyone measures differently and with a degree of inconsistency. The best thing you can do is make your recipe measuring the ingredients the way you normally do, weighing them as you go. Take the average of several cups of flour for your conversion factor. You can scale up from those values. If you use someone else's interpretation of a cup of flour, any differences will be magnified, and you might end up with multiple loaves not turning out their best.
Yep. I guess I need to find my own personal "true north" and then work from there. It almost seems like each ingredient manufacturer should publish *their* cup-to-gram equivalency since they know the specs of their own flour/sugar/etc.
You probably now realize why most makers (and cooks for that matter) measure weights instead of volume. As Debra Wink said, there is no standard for flour because it depends on the flour particle size and how much air is between the particles. I would follow her advice, with this small addition. Since water doesn’t have the same issue with air incorporation, measure a cup of water in each of your cups and see if the discrepancy is similar. If it is, then your measuring cups are different sizes, so pick one and get rid of the other. If, however, they are the same, then the aeration of the flour is likely the culprit.
I generally use 125 gm as a starting point for 1 cup of AP flour, and 230 gm for water.
-Brad
So I did it! And yes, one measuring cup is definitely bigger than the other. I also transferred the water into my glass pyrex measuring cup, and I could see that my favorite measuring cup = pyrex perfectly. I will likely get rid of the new set of measuring cups; fortunately they were not expensive.
Thank you for that great idea!
which takes into account some differing types of flour. Also many other baking ingredients.
https://www.traditionaloven.com/conversions_of_measures/flour_volume_weight.html
Thank you! That's a neat site!
Firstly, the site is "dessert first ", which matches my priority. Secondly, it does flour with different methods of getting it into the cup.
https://dessertfirstgirl.com/baking-conversions
the new cups. Check to see if they are metric cups. You need a scale. Put the cup onto the scale and tare to 00. Fill each one to the rim with water and weigh the water. metric cups hold 240, 120, 80, 60, 30 ml (1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/8 cups).
It is stamped right on the cup: "237 ml." I did not know that there was a metric cup and an Imperial cup! Huh. Learn something new every day. I will still likely give them away -- I need to be consistent! Thanks for the heads up!
There are also dry and wet measuing cups. ..and ingredients... if you take a dry measuring cup, one with a knife or straight scraping edge, it will generally weigh less than measuring the same amount (of say sugar) in a wet measuring cup (the glass one with the handle and spout.) Play around with your tools and spoons and a scale to get familiar with them. I would play with the flour last as I always consider the flour "the dirty ingredient" and would not wany to contaminate other ingredients that get eaten raw. Then wash up afterwards.
The best way to convert is to take your favourite recipes (the ones you've already tweaked and used) paired with your favourite measure cups and then put each ingredient on a metric scale and write down the weight of that ingredient. Do it several times, at least three times to get the average. You can round up flour and larger ingredients up 5-10g without being off in the conversion.
If you have been using a dry measuring cup for liquids, you may notice a discrepancy and tendancy for too little moisture in that recipe eventually having to add more liquids. Example: a dry cup is used for flour, then that very same cup is used to measure water. (This is also a fun exercise. Then take the weights and figure out the hydration of the recipe dough to compare different measuring methods.)
if your cup says 237 ml it is not a metric cup but the USA Standard liquid cup and the cup you have been using, the smaller one, is the USA standard dry cup. I would not be quick to give it away. If you look in most cookbooks, you can find their directions for measuring. A while back, I wnt thru my cookbooks and marked that page in each book with a brightly colored tab so I could find it easier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_(unit)
So basically every international recipe is like your grandmother's "four shakes of flour, two glugs of olive oil, about 3/4 of a glass of water..."
:) And maybe a few teaspoons. Metric weights are easier maths. All you have to do is multiply or divide to scale up or down. And that includes the weight of eggs.
Can't wait to read this later!
So, I am making a favorite banana chocolate chip muffin recipe which calls for 3 cups of AP flour. I weighed six individual cups of flour to see where my measurements were falling (I've made this recipe for years, using measuring cups, not weight). I was shocked to see that I was consistently filling, scraping with a knife and weighing in between 142 and 145g. That is higher than the 128g I measured the other day, and considerably higher than the 120g or 128g I see listed on some other sites. Sigh. Ignorance was much easier!
I am not going to experiment with it, but if you scoop directly with the measuring cup it is going to be more densely packed. Perhaps if you are at the bottom of the flour it will also be more densely packed since it has had the weight of the other flour on top of it. Or maybe even just had more time to settle. Sometimes the knife I grab to level it off is a bit curved (or I can just be sloppy). But, one way to look at it is there are about 16 Tbsp in a cup, so the difference between "normal" of 128g and your 120g to 140g is about a Tbsp each way. But, if you think about it, you have been making your favorite recipe with this uncertainty forever.
Just because I am too lazy to convert everything, I have just started putting my mixing bowl on a scale and measuring out (with cups and stuff) my favorite recipes and then just note the weights and write it down on my recipe card. Kinda threw me this weekend when I added 0g of cloves (1/4 tsp).
Exactly my thoughts... been doing it forever, and it has been fine. The real difference winds up being in the extra minute of bake time a muffin might require if it is wetter than usual. Science + art!