Need help translating recipe from American, lol
 

If a recipe asks for a cup of flour, how the heck am I supposed to know how many ounces/grammes that is?? How do you people bake like that :D

And is a cup of flour going to be the same weight in oz/g as a cup of say, sugar (different consistency and all that)? Is there a secret to translating cups to weights that I don't know?

Thanks ladies :thumbup:

We bake like that because it's the only way we're taught, LOL! Just like you're taught metric and weights. ;)

Try these:
http://www.joyofbaking.com/USMetricVolumeEquiv.html
http://www.joyofbaking.com/USMetricWeightEquiv.html

I would be careful of using the weights though. The volumes are more accurate than the weights because of exactly what you mentioned. 1 cup of flour weighs less than 1 cup of sugar, etc.

1 cup is 125 cl. What I've done is that I found a glass that is about that size and I use this as a measurement. Well, that was until I found measuring... cups, that is! LOL

A cup is also 8 oz liquid

haha! what Col said; thats how we're taught. i remember in school they taught us a little of the metric system. it was too hard to keep them straight. i'll stick with my cups, ounces, pounds and inches thankyouverymuch lol.

Wishes desperately that we'd go to the metric system! lol

Going by volumetric measurements, it can be effected by how 'aerated' it is. By weight is the better way to go when baking ;)

I have a few recipes that call for measurements in weight rather than volume (mostly bread recipes) and for those recipes I just have to get out my scale and weigh the ingredients.

I always wonder why wasn't the beauty of the metric system recognized everywhere. I will sound biased but I really think there's nothing better out there in terms of measurement, it's very logical and easy to understand. I can see tradition is tradition, but still, I'd like to know sometimes why someone chose this and other that. :-)

BTW, we do have cup recipes in Europe, too, they're supposed to be "recipes for dummies", and as a student I was all posh and looking down at them, like "I can do better". But geee I do appreciate them now! And my most popular one, muffins, is a cup recipe and it's heavenly. :-)

I'm even more confused than ever now :D :D. Thanks for all the replies ladies :)

Americans are a bunch of rebels! ;)

I'm such a perfectionist that I just imagine myself taking grains of sugar off of my highly accurate scale to get just the right amount. Using cups/tablespoons, etc, I do see where recipes are flawed in that you have to know what consistency you want the batter/dough/sauce/whatever.

I did, however, appreciate the use of the metric system in my engineering classes. Boy do I love the number 10 and how I simply had to memorize the word beginnings and scientific notation assocated and I knew all of the measurements there ever could be.

This is still a volume measurement and not a weight. 1 cup is a volume and 8 oz is also a volume.

What you need is a conversion between Volume and weight which will be dependent on the item. It all depends on the density of the item. Sugar is more dense than flour so the same VOLUME will be different WEIGHTS.

It is, I believe, more accurate to bake using weight measures, because it eliminates the variability of how the baker puts the flour in a cup. If you put flour in a cup and shake it around it will settle. Then if you add more (to get the volume right) you will have too much. That's why us Americans have to learn how to scoop flour gently into a cup! Betty Crocker even has a special name for that 'technique'!

Let me poke around on Google and see if I can find something...

OK...

try this link. It's a calculator that converts volume (cups) of flour to weight. It even has the ability to select different types of flours which will be more/less dense.

http://www.traditionaloven.com/conve...me_weight.html

And here's the sugar one:
http://www.traditionaloven.com/conve...r_amounts.html

These look great, but I cannot vouch for their accuracy! Hope it works for you!