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Weights/Cup of Various Flours


MickinMD

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Here's a table of the densities (weight per cup) of various types of flours if you like it.  I haven't used cake flour, but all the others have worked great for me making dough with an automatic bread machine's dough cycle.

As a chemist who has developed lab and industrial reactor-sized synthetic chemical "recipes," I'm appalled in dough-making recipes when they give volumes instead of weights for the amount of flour, a critical measure.  As the note from America's Test Kitchen at the bottom of this message shows, WEIGH your ingredients when possible.

I used to make doughs that were a little dry or mushy and needed a little more water or flour when I began making homemade doughs about 20 years ago.  I quickly realized that measuring by weight was the way I needed to go to get it right every time.

Volume is especially tricky with flour, where a little packing can change the weight per volume and where the standard procedure for getting correct volume is to pour the flour into a measuring cup to a little higher than the top with no packing of the flour, then run a straight-edged spatula across the top to scrape off the excess.

Screw that!  Why not determine the weight you need of the flour and weigh it in a container with ample volume to easily hold it all?  That's MUCH more accurate!

But, if you look for weights of various flours per cup on the Internet, you get a ridiculously huge variation.  For example, I needed 3 cups of Whole Wheat Flour to make dough for two 13" pizzas.  Bob's Red Mill says it's 152 g per cup. I don't think that's right even for Bob's version. Another webpage said 120 g per cup.  Some brands clearly don't carefully check their data.  For example the store-brand Weis Supermarker Whole Wheat and Bread Flours both say 1/4 cup is 30 g, but Bread Flour is a couple grams heavier per quarter cup!

So, back then I looked at many web pages, threw out the outliers like Bob's, and averaged the majority of pages with weights that were close together.  I came up with Whole Wheat Flour weighing 128 g (4.50 oz.) per cup.  So I weighed out 3 x 4.50 oz. = 13.5 oz. and the dough came out perfect.

So here is the chart I keep on my refrigerator

Weight per cup Measurements of Flours and Liquids

Per Cup:

 

Bread Flour: 135 g, 4.75 oz.

 

Whole Wheat Flour: 128 g, 4.50 oz.

 

All-Purpose Flour: 121 g, 4.25 oz.

 

Rye Flour: 114 g, 4.00 oz. (102 g, 3 5/8 oz?)

 

Cake Flour: 114 g, 4.00 oz.

 

Water: 227 g, 8.00 oz.

 

Milk: 236 g, 8.30 oz.

 

Note: 1 oz. = 28.35 g, 1 lb = 453.6 g.

 

 

 

According to http://www.recipesource.com/misc/hints/flour-weights01.html

King Arthur says ALL flour types weigh 4 oz (113 grams) per cup. If I used the KA 4 oz., I'd have mud, not dough. And, in the case of a rye loaf, it would be much too dry.

 

And America’s Test Kitchen is right about weighing flour, not measuring by volume, but it’s weight/cup numbers are WAY off:

CooksEditor Posted:  4/2/2003

http://www.americastestkitchen.com/ibb/posts.aspx?postID=68

Different types of flour register weight differently. Bread flour, for example, weighs approximately 5.5 ounces / cup. All-purpose flour weighs slightly less at approximately 5 ounces / cup. The type of measuring device you are using, the type of storage device for your flour (i.e., plastic vs. paper, airtight vs. screw-top), or how heavy (or light) handed you are when scooping out flour are all factors that can effect the end weight. We investigated the measuring variances in the January/February issue in Kitchen Notes (Page 30). We concluded that the best way to ensure successful recipes is to use a kitchen scale to weigh ingredients.
Best Regards,
Cook's

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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