Measure Flour Correctly with The Spoon & Sweep Method

Measure Flour Correctly with The Spoon & Sweep Method

Delicious homemade baked goodies make us feel all warm and cozy, especially during the holidays. For those who love to bake, Christmas time is the perfect season to show-off their culinary skills. But even those who don’t normally spend a lot of time in the kitchen will often dust off their winter themed aprons and look for the perfect cookie, cake or pie recipe to make for family and friends.

Many of those holiday sweet treat recipes will start with a cup or two of flour. Before you excitedly dive in and dig that measuring cup into your bag of powdery goodness, read on. We’ve got a tip you can apply to every recipe and will make your baking life rise to excellence. Measure flour correctly each and every time with our spoon and sweep method.

How To Measure Flour Correctly  – The Spoon & Sweep Method: 

  1. Fluff up the flour in your flour bag.
  2. Use a spoon to fill your measuring cup with flour until required amount is obtained.
  3. Use a straight-edge utensil (like a knife) to level across the measuring cup so you remove the excess flour on the top.

Simple, right? But it’s crucial for recipe success. Here’s why. Every baked good requires the exact amount of flour to achieve the perfect outcome. According to our very own Chef Eddy Van Damme, the “prince of pastry,” when wet ingredients like milk, eggs, vanilla or sour cream come in contact with flour, a reaction is created where the proteins of the flour form gluten strands. Gluten strands (protein in flour) form a stretchy network which expands by the action of leavening agents such as yeast, baking powder, or baking soda.

Too much flour makes the gluten network too dense and gasses will not be powerful enough to leaven the product—resulting in a dense and hard-baked product. Not enough flour and the mixture will be too fluid, and gases cannot be trapped by the gluten network. The baked good will not leaven properly—which results in a dense product that will not rise and or spread enough.

If you scoop the measuring cup directly into the flour bag, it will firmly pack the flour resulting in more than what is required for your recipe.

So now that you why it’s important to measure flour correctly, you’ll need some fantastic cookie and cake recipes for the holiday season. We’ve got Christmas covered with more than 300 recipes.

Check out our past Sweetalk blog posts to find out what kind of flour is best for baking and how to store common baking ingredients including flour.

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