Beth: Weights & Measures

There is a reason that, though injured, I wanted to write this article. You see, here at A Year in Bread HQ, we have weighty discussions and a fundamental disagreement that seems destined to remain eternally unresolved. Fortunately for our friendship, we each know that we alone are correct and we are happy to let the other two believe what they want to believe. So we continue to be good friends even across this divide.

Fortunately for you, however, I get to give you my side of the argument first and with any luck, educate you on something that has been weighing heavily on my mind lately before Susan and Kevin arrive to tell you what they believe (which is wrong, remember, but we can humor them — they are so much easier to live with when they think they are right).

What is the great argument here? Only the one true weigh, I mean way to bread happiness!

The question is: How much does a cup of flour weigh? The answers:

· Beth 4.5 ounces (126gr)
· Kevin 5.2 ounces (145gr)
· Susan 5 ounces (140gr)

How is it possible that three experienced, passionate, and sometimes downright geeky bakers can fail to agree on such a basic number? More importantly, what does that mean for people who just want to reliably make good bread?

Sadly, I have no simple answers. The weight of a cup of flour depends on many variables: the exact type of flour, whether it is sifted (and when), how the flour gets from container to measuring cup (scooped or spooned), and (my favorite) the weather.

What I can offer you is a collection of our thoughts on how we deal with the inexactness of measuring flour in real life (and a few related matters) with the hope that you will find your own answer for how much your cup of flour weighs.

Kevin
"A pint is a pound the whole world 'round." This refers to the fact that a pint of water (or beer) weighs one pound. This means that one ounce of liquid also weighs one ounce and it's the only case where converting from weight to volume or vice versus is painless.

Did you know that a level tablespoon of table salt weighs more than a level tablespoon of kosher salt, and that a tablespoon of sea salt has yet another weight? These issues matter tremendously when working at commercial quantities and when scaling from a relatively small amount of something to a much bigger amount. That's why professional cooks (and bakers) prefer to use weight to measure things.

I prefer to use volume measurements when baking bread — cups, quarts, tablespoons, and so on. The reason for this preference is convenience and accuracy. I have a decent kitchen scale, but its accuracy is imprecise when measuring units below 1 ounce. So although my scale tells me that a tablespoon of yeast weighs 3/8 of an ounce it might actually weigh 5/16ths. However, a tablespoon is always a tablespoon and is always 15 milliliters. At the quantities a home baker works at that's close enough -- even when measuring salt.

The hardest measure, and least precise, is flour. Flour is hydrophilic — it absorbs water. In a precise formula where water is a key element, such as bread, it isn't simply the weight of the flour that matters, it's the weight of the flour in relation to water that is critical. If the flour contains more water you should add less and if it contains less water you should add more.

Creepy Crawlies
Nearly any flour or grain (oats, etc.) will have some kind of insect eggs in it. Even if you can't store your flours in the freezer, just putting them in there for 24 hours will kill any future creepy crawlies.

As a home baker this is getting far too complicated. What matters is the proportion of water to flour, and you can learn to feel and taste and smell that. And once you learn to do so, then the precise measurements become less important. Feel your dough, taste it, and smell it at every step.

Susan
Although I love my scale, which is great for weighing out dough when shaping loaves and rolls, when I make bread I usually use cups & measuring spoons because the amount of flour is almost never the same, so I don't need the precision of weights. What I do is always use the same amount of water and yeast, then add more or less flour to make the dough feel right.

That said, I've been converting all my recipes to weight, because when I start baking on a large scale for the wholesale bread bakery we're slowly building here on the farm, I will have to weigh all of my ingredients.

I tend to make the same recipes over and over so I can get a good feel for what "right" is. I've been using the same brand of flour for over 10 years so I'm familiar with it.

I buy 50-pound bags of Heartland Mill Organic Unbleached All-Purpose Flour and Heartland Mill Organic Strong Bread Flour (High Gluten). During the summer, if I have room I store the flour in a chest freezer; in the winter our pantry literally turns into a walk-in refrigerator so everything is fine in there.

I buy organic whole grain flours (white whole wheat, whole wheat, rye, etc.) in smaller amounts because they go rancid faster. These are best kept in the freezer if possible to keep them fresher.

I store my flour in the original 50-pound bags which I store in large plastic tubs. I fill 2-gallon size commercial plastic tubs with all-purpose and bread flour from the big bags. I just scoop the flour into the tubs with a 2-cup s/s measure. When I'm baking, I take a s/s measuring cup and scoop up enough flour so that the cup overfills in one scoop. Then I scrape off the extra flour with the lid of the tub.

Beth
For the longest time I only measured things by volume, using my long practiced kitchenMage sense (sort of like Spidey sense but without the precipitating radiation) to tweak doughs that looked a bit off somehow. One day, after measuring 7 cups of flour for my usual batch of baguettes again, I decided to give in and spend the 50 bucks for a shiny metal box that would magically tell me the correct amount of flour each and every time.

As they say in Minnesota, "Ya sure, you betcha."

I am not saying I stopped weighing things, actually I use the scale all the time. Weighing ingredients, especially flour, is convenient and, once you figure out the correct amounts for a recipe once, reasonably reliable. But you need to figure out what the person who wrote each recipe meant when they said "1 cup" because, as you can see with the three of us, it's probably not what you mean when you say 1 cup.

When I have to measure flour by volume, I shake the plastic container that I store it in, scoop a measuring cup full and level it with the lid — pretty much like Susan. But I seldom measure that way. I usually weigh flour, figuring 4.5 ounces per cup) and leave out about a cup when I am mixing the dough. That flour, and more if needed, gets added once the dough has been mixed a bit and I have a feel for what it needs. The actual amount of flour I use (by weight) gets written in the margin of the cookbook so that after I have made a recipe a few times I know how much flour I need to use.

Usually after I have done this with a few recipes in a given book, I can generalize the weight to the rest of the book. When I can't, it makes me wonder what sort of committee wrote the cookbook — I can deal with high variance from one person to the next but not from one recipe to another in the same darned book!

What does this all mean for you? Well, a couple of things.

First, if you bake something and it doesn't come out quite right — heck, even if it is a total failure — don't blame yourself. Measuring a cup of flour is dirt simple stuff, yet the experts can't even agree amongst themselves. Even beyond that, all books have typos, the rigor of recipe testing varies from book to book, and, as anyone who made meringue on a rainy day will tell you, even environmental factors matter.

More importantly, you need to find your own path through this uncertainty. Susan's approach is a solid one: a cup of water weighs the same amount almost everywhere (I just know someone from Denver will be here to say it's different there). My approach of determining what a given author means in their cookbook will help you a lot as you bake using a variety of recipes. That last bit of advice from Kevin is perhaps the most useful: feel your dough. Once you know what a stiff dough feels like compared to a soft one, you will gain confidence in your baking that goes far beyond certainty as to the weight of a cup of flour.

But I am still right: a cup of flour weighs 4.5 ounces and don't let those heretics tell you otherwise.

Further reading: Weighting to measure

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Baking Better Bread

Susan: Do some reading. Just don't overdo it. Pick one bread book and read it from cover to cover. If you like it and it makes sense to you, read it again. Then try a recipe. If you like the result (or if it came out terrible but you know it has potential), make it again. And again and again and again. It is better to make one bread twenty times than to make twenty breads one time.

Beth: Don't be afraid to experiment. Once you've learned to bake one kind, using the same recipe, reliably. Then try a recipe that has a significant difference from the first — like using a starter or additional ingredients. You can compare the results and learn how the changes in recipe/method change the resulting bread.

Kevin: Get several books. One author's way teaching may make more sense to you than another's — even though both authors know what they're talking about.

Beth: Try long cold fermentations. Almost any bread is improved by a long, cold bulk ferment. Sweet or enriched breads don't benefit as much, but still some. You may want to reduce the yeast (by 25-50%, maybe even a bit more) so be prepared to experiment.

Kevin: Parchment paper is more reliable than corn meal, flour, or both for releasing bread from the peel.

Susan: Start with the very best ingredients. When you are creating something with only four basic ingredients (flour, water, salt, yeast), the quality of those ingredients is crucial.

Beth: It is easier to handle slack doughs when they are cold.

Kevin: Use a baking stone (sometimes called a pizza stone). Stones are capable of absorbing a great deal of thermal energy and then giving it up slowly which means the bread cooks at a more consistent temperature. And give the oven and stone plenty of time to preheat — at least an hour.

Beth: If you want a rustic, open crumb with those marvelous large holes do not 'punch down the dough' after the first rise. Instead, turn it out on a floured surface and fold the dough into thirds, gently stretching when needed. You want to degas the bread as little as possible while still creating surface tension in the shaped loaf. A little practice will make it all fairly easy.

Beth: If dough springs back When you are shaping it, let it rest a few minutes to relax the gluten. You may need to repeat the stretch-rest cycle a few times to get the dough into the desired shape.

Susan: Use a sourdough starter or a sponge or a poolish or a lump of old dough. There are all different types of "starters." Some are made in a few hours, some in a few days, and some live in your fridge forever. Any kind of starter will vastly improve the crust, crumb, and flavor of your loaves.

Susan: Sprinkle in the flour and stir like crazy. When you are mixing up your dough, add only about a handful of flour at a time. Use your whole arm to stir, making wide sweeping motions. This will "whip" the dough and allow the gluten to develop.

Kevin: Never add all the flour in the beginning even if you're using a stand mixer. You can always add more flour if you need it.

Beth: Those thin plastic "cutting boards" that you can pick up in multi-packs for a few dollars are a baker's dream. I've been using mine as rolling surfaces lately. You can even stack them with dough on them for resting periods so you free up counter space. If you use them for rolling dough, remember the untextured side sticks less.

Susan: Give it a rest, then add the salt. This tip not only greatly improves nearly any type of bread, but it also allows you to decrease your kneading time (which improves the bread even more).

Beth: Pizza stones radiate heat that can be used to give rising bread a kickstart. Place a warm stone on the stove top with a rack on top of it, then set the dough on top of that to rise.

Kevin: The oven can be used to speed up the dough rise. In most ovens, the light will raise the temperature in the oven to around 75F (24C), which is perfect for raising bread.

Susan: Catch yourself a couche. A couche is a piece of heavy canvas that is dusted with flour and used to support freestanding loaves, such as rolls and baguettes, while they are proofing. The couche cradles the loaves, keeping them straight and preventing them from sticking together.

Susan: Make some steam. Steam slows crust formation, which allows for the best possible oven "spring." It also gelatinizes the starch on the surface of the bread so that it develops a thin, glossy, beautifully brown crust.

Note: You can read more detailed versions of Susan's tips at Farmgirl Fare.

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Beth: Pizza crust 2

Just a quick note to talk about the 'wetness' of my crust. I've talked with a few folks about their experience and have come to a couple of conclusions.

First, I underestimated you all and I apologize for that. I had this really wet dough and thought I'd adjust it a bit for sane people. So I reduced the water from 1 3/4 cups to 1 1/2, tweaked the rest a bit and published it.

What a fool I am.

You all clearly are not sane! Anyone who doubts that can go read the comment thread on my first pizza post, down towards the end where the subject turns to pickles on pizza and sandwiches. Grilled pineapple sandwiches. That was just the beginning.

Also, I know my dough is wetter than what people describe, even with the decreased amount of water. I made several batches and it was pretty darned wet. Then I was talking to one of our breadies and it dawned on me.
I live in a fog valley at the edge of a rain forest.

Seriously, we get 120 inches of rain a year here in evenTinierTown. That's ten feet. Ten feet!

Why would this matter? Well, flour is absorbent and my air is wet. I'm guessing that this means my flour, thus my dough, is just wetter than most people's, even given the same measurements.

So for those of you who live in a drier climate - meaning everyone except Ariel the mermaid - feel free to add a bit of extra water (1/4 cup | 2 ounces | 56 grams) to get that fog valley effect. You may want to add a smidge of extra salt or swap olive oil instead of some of the additional water.

Then again, you may want pickles on your pizza...can't help you with that.

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