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Question about weighing flour for bread
I keep seeing people at the farmers market scoop flour right from the bag with a cup measure. It drives me nuts because a cup can weigh anywhere from 4 to 6 ounces depending on how you pack it. My sourdough starter went crazy for a week until I switched to a $20 kitchen scale. Has anyone else had their recipes get way better after they stopped using cups?
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pat_moore1mo ago
Right around 4.5 ounces is what my old King Arthur bag says a cup should be, but I tested it out of curiosity and my scoop-and-level method was giving me 5.8 ounces on average. What nobody talks about is how humidity changes the weight too. I live in a damp basement apartment and some days my flour almost feels wet, so that cup measure gets even heavier. My doughs used to be sticky and hard to handle in summer even following the same written recipe. Weighing fixes all that because you're getting the exact same amount of flour protein regardless of how tight you packed it or how moist the air is.
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daniel_gonzalez2mo ago
My buddy's pizza dough was always a mess until he borrowed my scale. His cups of flour were so packed down he was basically making cement. The first time he weighed it, he was using almost two extra ounces without knowing. His crust went from tough and dense to something you'd actually want to eat in one weekend. He bought his own scale the next day.
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