How to measure flour

As has been said in these forums most commercial bakers would go by weight. This can be adjusted for different brands of flour and relative humidity if required.

The majority of american books that I have give excellent results with the 'loosen and spoon ' method of measuring flour. This gives a bit less flour than scooped and more than sifted.

What alsways causes me a pain is where the recipe calls for One cup - sifted.

Do they mean scoop one cup and then sift it, or sift it and use one cup. ?

For weighed whole eggs you break them into a container, lightly stir to break up the yolks, and use the exact weight given in the recipe. A number of eggs per pound will get you very close. A pro baker would get frozen whole egg in a bucket.

It means (likely).....Scoop the flour from the bag,and ; sift it into a bowl first, before you spoon that into your measuring cup and then level it of. with spatula/ palette knife.. Scooping a sifted flour into the measuring cup tends to compress them a little bit. and you may tend to put more flour ( slightly) into the cup. There is a very slight difference in weight between the scooped sifted flour and the spooned sifted flour.. Roy

... and all that is simply a pain in the butt! Measuring by weight is

Dave

Dave I can measure with equivalent competence in volumes and in weights and prefer the former for household baking and the later for institutional work.But even in some bakery work I can use volume measurement with .scoops ,ladles ,quarts pints and gallons and the product comes out satisfactorily specially with breads but less with cakes. If you want to check how this variations in cup measurements try making a cake recipe and see how batter consistency varies. If is just you cannot understand as you are defnitely a bread man. And IMO bread making is a no brainer effort. Besides bread recipes are more robust if compared to cakes. Roy

Let me be the first to bid you idea. Send us a postcard when you reach more fertile pastures.