My grandma's 1962 recipe card said 2 cups of flour and I finally asked her why my dough kept coming out dry

Barbara Grant · 2026-10-10T09:25:04.200259+00:00

Last Saturday I was at my grandma's house in Toledo helping her clean out the kitchen cupboards when I found her old recipe box. She pulled out a card for kolache she wrote in 1962 and I noticed it said 2 cups of flour, which never made sense to me because I have tried that recipe three times and the dough always turns into a crumbly mess. She laughed and said the card was wrong, she always used 2 cups plus 3 tablespoons because flour back then was milled different and absorbed less water. That one small thing hit me hard because I have been blaming myself for a mistake that was printed on the card 63 years ago. I went home and mixed a batch with her correction and the dough finally came together soft and smooth on the first try. Now I am going back through every old family recipe and checking them against her memory instead of trusting the ink. Has anyone else run into this with handed down recipes, where the written amounts just do not match what actually works?

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My grandma's 1962 recipe card said 2 cups of flour and I finally asked her why my dough kept coming out dry | Bakers - Free To Speak