Why are the recipes in grams and not in cup measurements

I want to make the sourdough cinammon raisin bread but the measurements are in grams which I am not familiar with. Why aren’t the measurements in cup measurements.

Bread baking generally requires some precision. Depending on how compressed your flour is a cup of flour can vary by a very large amount. Most bread bakers will weight their ingredients for the most precision and better results. It also saves having to clean measuring cups and spoons. :smile:

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Here are some conversions for you. Some I had memorized and others I googled.

1 cup flour is 130 grams
1 cup water is 236 grams
1 teaspoon salt is 6 grams
1 cup raisins is 150 grams
1 cup maple syrup is 120 grams
1 cup starter is 300 grams

Thank you so much !!

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Here is a great web page for converting almost anything. https://www.inchcalculator.com/ I have converted most of my recipes to pounds and ounces, but grams are much more accurate.

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The weight of a cup of flour depends on the type of flour & which website/cookbook you look at. King Arthur lists 1 cup of Bread Flour at 120g, whole wheat flour at 116g & rye at 113g.
Cups of Flour to Grams Conversion (c to g) - Inch Calculator lists bread flour at 127g per cup & whole wheat at 120g. Peter Reinhart is higher in his whole grain bread book. It seems odd that there is no consensus on the weight of a cup of flour??

It gets even better than that. Consider that internet recipes are read everywhere in the world. So, a “cup” is:

200 ml in Japan
240 ml in the U.S.
250 ml in Australia
284 ml in the U.K.

That is just some of them. There are more variations on a “cup”. I think in Russia there are two measurements for what a cup is, one “cup” for alcohol, and another “cup” for everything else.

And the irony is grandma didn’t use a cup, she just reached in and grabbed a “handful” of flour - that is how she measured it.

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I watched my paternal grandmother bake & cook all the time. For a “cup” she literally grabbed one of her tea cups. A “teaspoon” was one of her actual teaspoons; not a measuring teaspoon. It was the same thing for a “tablespoon.” She’d just grab one of her tablespoons. Funny thing was, everything she made/baked was delicious! And to think I need to weigh everything! I actually do weigh my ingredients because I know there can be so much variance in “cup” measurements. And yes, I do use measuring spoons too. :laughing:

Baking blessings,
Leah

Breadtopia’s recipes are constructed in grams, but volumes are converted for people who don’t have scales at 130g per cup all purpose, bread flour, whole grain flours.
Except, I’ve consistently gotten 140-145g with Kamut and durum flours.
Corn flour tends to go the other direction, around 115g per cup.

Peter Reinhart seems to be using 130g for a cup of bread & whole wheat flour also. I weighed 1 cup of my home milled whole wheat flour this morning using several different measuring cups & all were in the 130g -135g range. Same for KA bread flour.

I had been using King Arthur’s flour weights when I converted an older recipe but I guess I’ll go with the 130g a cup weight from now on.

Cool. Yes, I also get 130-135 when weighing out flour cups.
So actually in the recipe conversions, if something is awkward
340g = “2.5 cups + 1 tbsp” I then check with 135g as an alternate, to see if I get a rounder volume, and throw in a “heaping” or “scant” if it’s the other direction.

Baker’s percent is why recipes are in grams. Advantage of using grams with Baker’s percent is you can make amount of dough you wish to make. For this example I will use example of making 1 kg of dough. Let’s say total of all the percentages is 178.1%, I would divide 1000 g by 178.1 % which would give me 568 g for amount of flour and once I have amount of flour I can then calculate amount of each other ingredient, if water percentage was 73% then 414.5 g of water would be needed. I hope the explains why recipes are in grams.