To expand a bit.

If you fluff the flour and carefully move it into the cup, you may get a cup
of flour that weighs about 4 ounces. If you roughly spoon it into the cup,
you'll get about 5 ounces. If you scoop from a compacted bag of bread
flour, you may get as much as 6 or 7 ounces. Whole wheat flour seems to be
less variable, probably because it has enough roughage in it to make it
flow.

The King Arthur Baking book claims they use 4 1/4 ounces per cup, since this
is what they and a lot of authors have noticed seems to work.

The problem comes in the conversion. Do they take the cups and multiply by
4.25 or do they take the weight they use and convert it?

Bottom line, we should get rid of volume measurements for as many
ingredients as we can.

Barry

"Vox Humana" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Harri85274" > wrote in message
> ...
> > Most recipes call for 1 cup of flour. If I weigh it to 8 oz the same
> thing? Or
> > 16 tablespoons? My measuring cups have a lip on them, even the plastic
> ones,
> > which makes me believe they are only for liquids.
>
> Weight is the most accurate way of measuring ingredients. However, one
cup
> of flour doesn't weigh 8 oz. Each ingredient has a different density and
a
> volume unit measure will vary in weight from one to another. Furthermore,
> if you are converting a recipe you have to take into consideration if the
> flour was supposed to be sifted and then measured, lightly spooned into
the
> cup, or the cup dipped into the container and then swept level. You can
> determine the weight of ingredients by looking at the nutritional label.
> For instance, one quarter cup of AP flour is consider a serving size and
is
> listed as 30 grams. That make one cup of AP flour equal to 120g. You can
> find the weight of cooking ingredients (per cup) at this site:
> http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/cgi-bin/nut_search.pl
>
>