How to Measure Flour The Right Way for Baking Recipes

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If you feel like your cookies or cakes aren’t turning out right, the problem could be as simple as how you’re scooping out the flour! This blog post goes into all the details on how to measure flour correctly, because, yes, there is a right and wrong way to measure flour! By the end of this blog post, you’ll have all the information to level up your baking game with the best practices on how to measure flour!

At the end of the day, baking is a science; a delicious science, but a science nonetheless! Baking ratios are really important to follow to make sure the dry ingredient to wet ingredient ratio stays the same. If you take a second to think about it, most baked goods are comprised of the same ingredients: flour, leavening agent, fat. However, how you change that ratio depends on what you get, less flour and you wind up with more of a cake or brownie. More flour and you end up with a cookie dough! 

One common mistake that I’ve seen with home bakers struggling with dry cakes and crumbly cookie doughs. While there are many things that could lead to this, I believe that the short answer is that there’s too much flour being added in the recipe! The good news is that there’s an easy way to fix this problem! I’ve included a video at the end of this blog post to sure you how to get the most accurate method to measuring flour and what the incorrect flour measurement is doing to your recipe! 

How To Measure Flour the INCORRECT way

If you are taking the measuring cup directly into the bag of flour, packing the flour into the measuring cup and putting that directly into your wet ingredients, then I have bad news for you. You have just added way too much flour to your recipe! 

Things that went wrong here: 

• Scooping directly into the bag of flour. If you haven’t noticed that bag of flour is pretty firm, which means they’ve packed the flour into the bag. It’s very condensed and packed together, so if you’re scooping flour directly from there, you’re packing the flour into the measuring cup and that’s adding more flour than you need!
• Packing the flour into the measuring cup. Some ingredients, like brown sugar for example, need to be packed into the measuring cup; however, flour is not one of them!

How to Measure Flour the CORRECT Way 

Here’s the best way to make sure that you are getting the correct amount of flour that your recipe calls for by using dry measuring cups: 

• Take a whisk or a fork or spoon, and gently fluff up the flour in the bag. I like to take the spoon that I’ll use in the next step and gently stir it around in the flour bag; this helps break up the flour into light soft flour. Think about it in terms of snow. We don’t want snow at the very bottom that’s been packed down and walked on; we want the snow that’s gently fallen to the top and is light and airy! 
• Then, scoop your flour into a measuring cup! I like to place a paper towel down, then put the measuring cup on top, so that if the flour spills over, I can pour back into the bag later! We don’t waste flour around here!
• Keep scooping the flour into the measuring cup. Don’t pack it in, just let it gently settle until it gets to the top of the measuring cup. 
• When the flour is full, I take the handle of the spoon or the back of a knife and push the excess off the top! 

Now you have a correct measurement of flour! 

Step By Step Instructions

Another Way to Measure Flour: Weight Measurements

Another preferred way of measuring flour and dry ingredients is to use a food scale to weigh out your ingredients! I’ve seen plenty of professional bakers use a digital kitchen scale to measure out their dry ingredients! I do have a digital scale in my kitchen that I mainly use when it comes to my morning espresso, but I have heard that it’s a cleaner way to measure your cups of flour because you can just place your bowl on top of the scale and pour the flour directly into the bowl! 

Most of my recipes are using measuring spoons and cups, however, it’s very simple to convert recipes from cups to grams if you would like to test this way as well! If you try out both methods, leave us a note in the comments and tell us which one you like best! 

Measuring Ingredients – The Brown Sugar Exception 

If you’re looking to get consistent results when it comes to baking, I urge you to try this method for measuring flour! This works with any type of flour that you need for your recipe, whether that’s all purpose flour, cake flour, or gluten free flour! The important thing to take away from this blog post is to not pack the flour into the measuring cup. You’ll wind up accidentally adding more flour than the recipe calls for, which means you could end up with crumbly cookie dough, and no one wants that! 

I know what you might be thinking! “If the wrong way to measure flour is packing the flour into the measuring cup, then why do we want to pack in the brown sugar?” 

Let’s get into sugar science. Brown sugar is a combination of molasses and sugar. So if you’re measuring out 1/4 cup of sugar and you want to replace that with 1/4 cup of brown sugar, it’s not going to be a straight 1/4 of just sugar. By packing in the brown sugar, you’ll get closer to the same amount of sugar as you would with regular granulated sugar! 

Helpful Tips and Tricks

So next time you go to bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies, make sure you’re measuring out your flour the correct way to make sure you end up with the  best results possible!

P.S. If you’re a new baker here (Hi, I’m so glad you’re here!) I have a free eBook that’s the ultimate guide for new bakers! With chapters on what baking tools you need, such as whisks, spoons, and the best mixing bowl; and ending on what to buy at the grocery store to stock your pantry and fridge so you’re always ready for whenever the baking bug strikes! I’ve linked it right here if you want to check it out! 

Cheers!

-Holly Michelle