Cooking For Engineers

[Guest]

If a recipe calls for 1 Cup of All purpose flour and I wnat to measure that in weight instead of volume (to be more consistent), what would the correct conversion be for generic recipes?


Thank you

Muugi

[I'm a Guest, too]

Volume to weight through carbohydrates.

How many pounds in the bag? How many carbs per serving? How many servings in the bag? how many carbs in the bag? How many carbs per pound? How many cups per pound? How many partial pounds per cup.

Bada-bing.

I do this to conver powdered sugar to splenda.

Enjoy

[GaryProtein]

A number of years ago, my mother showed me a French (not "French" cooking, but in the French language) cookbook and recipes using flour and sugar were measured in grams, not volumetrically. She wanted to know how to convert the weight measurements back into cups of flour and sugar, etc. I told her to just weight it on her kitchen scale. I guess the French know that different types of flour (white, whole wheat, corn and other grains, etc) have different densities and that people may pack it into the measuring cup differently, and that measurement by weight is really the better way to measure for consistent results. Baking is chemistry lab where you get to eat the final product!

Anyway, for volumetric measurement, flour should be sifted and then scooped into the measuring cup. If you pack it in when doing volumetric mesurements, your cakes will be hard, not light and fluffy. Once you measure the weight of the specific flour you are using, you will have it for future reference. Since sugar cannot be packed like flour can, volumetric measurements can be consistently used, but weight is really the way to go.

[Michael Chu]

I must have missed the original post - otherwise I would have answered earlier.

When a recipe calls for 1 cup all-purpose flour, it is asking for 125 g of flour. The proper way to measure flour is to sift it first (pre-sifted flour from the bag does not count, you must sift again), fill a dry measuring cup and level with a straight edge. However, even if you did this, I bet you will not end up with 125 g - just something in the ball park. Volumetric measurement is really imprecise, but for general cooking, it suffices. For baking - use the mass.

Also, for sugar (granulated), 1 cup = 200 g. For brown sugars, 1 cup = 220 g. (To properly measure brown sugar volumetrically, you must pack it down as tight as it will go into the cup and then level the surface.)

Maybe I'll assemble an article with common volume to mass conversions...

[GaryProtein]

One thing I would add when considering to use mass or volumetric measurement is how much you are actually using in the recipe. I think as a general rule, larger amounts should be weighed, but small amounts, like under half an ounce or 15 g are probably better measured volumetrically. For example, I'd rather measure 1/2 teaspoon (or 2.5 ml) of baking powder than 3 grams. Kitchen scales are not analytical balances. My digital kitchen scale goes from 0-2000 g in 2 g increments, so that's another reason I would use volumetric measure for small qualntities.

[Leonessa]

[Michael Chu]

[FoodCr8R]

To convert Flour from volume to weight... Try the folowing,

1 Cup sifted AP Flour = 4 oz.
1 Cup unsifted AP Flour = 5 oz.