1 Cup of Flour in Grams

One cup of flour is 125 grams

A US cup of all purpose flour weighs 125 grams in the table most converters quote. That figure comes from the USDA FoodData Central record for enriched all purpose flour, FDC 168936 (SR Legacy, published 2019), whose household portion list gives one cup as 125 g. Divided down, the cup is 16 level tablespoons at 7.8 g each, 4.4 ounces on a kitchen scale and 236.6 mL of volume.

Two of those rows come from division rather than from the record: 125 / 16 = 7.8 for a single spoon, and 125 / 28.3495 = 4.4 for ounces. Calories come from the energy column, 364 kcal per 100 g, so 125 x 3.64 = 455 kcal for the cup.

What the number cannot tell you is how the flour got into the cup. Flour is the one common baking ingredient where the scoop decides the weight, and the spread between a loose cup and a packed one is wider than most cooks expect.

Why the same cup lands anywhere from 120 to 160 grams

Flour is a compressible powder, so a cup describes a shape rather than an amount. King Arthur Baking lists 120 g for a cup of all purpose flour on its ingredient weight chart, and its 2023 guide to measuring flour puts a packed cup at up to 160 g while a fluffed, scooped and leveled cup lands near 120 g. The USDA portion of 125 g sits between the two.

The extremes are 40 g apart, from 120 to 160, and that is a third of a cup of extra flour in the same measuring cup. In a cake the difference turns a tender crumb dry. In bread it changes hydration by several points without a drop of extra water, because the water stayed the same and the flour grew.

The bag itself adds variation. Flour settles in transit, so the first cup poured from a fresh bag is denser than the tenth, and a bag that has been sitting on a shelf for a month is denser still. Sifting breaks the clumps and folds in air, which makes the same cup lighter without changing what the recipe asked for.

Spoon and level, dip and sweep, or weigh

Three habits, three weights, one cup. Spooning flour into the cup and leveling it with the flat of a knife keeps the structure loose and lands close to 120 g. Dipping the cup straight into the bag and sweeping off the top compacts the flour, and that is how a cup reaches the 160 g that King Arthur measured. A scale skips the argument.

The gap is easy to state. Against the USDA cup, 160 - 125 = 35 g of extra flour, and 160 / 125 = 1.28, so a packed cup carries 28 percent more flour than the table assumes. A three cup recipe therefore swings between 375 g and 480 g depending on the hand holding the scoop.

A sourdough baker feeding a levain twice a day sees the drift at once, because the same 100 g of flour measured by scoop moves loaf hydration by a couple of points and shortens the proof. For anything with a tight crumb, weigh the flour and skip the volume step. A basic digital scale settles it in one move, and when a recipe prints its own gram column, that column was almost certainly written on a scale rather than scooped.

Cup to gram amounts common recipes print

Most formulas ask for quarters, thirds and halves, and those convert cleanly at 125 g per cup. The table below stops at four cups, since a home mixer rarely takes more at once.

Two rows deserve a note. A third of a cup is 125 / 3 = 41.7 g, which is 5.3 tablespoons, so a scale reading 42 g is right. Three quarters is 0.75 x 125 = 93.75 g, and rounding to 94 g loses a quarter of a gram, far below the tolerance of any dough.

Doubling runs the other way and stays exact: 2 x 125 = 250 g, and 8 x 125 = 1,000 g, a round kilo that makes a double batch simple to check against the bag.

The three cup standards behind 125 grams

The 125 g portion assumes a US cup of 236.588 mL, the figure NIST's Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8 gives for the customary cup. A 250 mL metric cup holds 5.7 percent more volume, and since flour weight follows volume when the scoop is identical, it holds more flour as well. The FDA guidance on metric equivalents of household measures (1993) uses a third size, 240 mL, for nutrition panels.

Each row is one line of scaling: 125 x 240 / 236.588 = 126.8 and 125 x 250 / 236.588 = 132.1. A four cup recipe written in Australia wants 528.4 g, while the same recipe printed in the US asks for 500 g. That 28.4 g difference is close to a quarter cup of flour, enough to notice in a sponge.

Cup size is not the only variable, but it is the one you can settle before the flour is even open. Match the measure to the country the recipe came from, then weigh, and the conversion stops drifting.

Calories, carbs and protein in one cup

Nutrition scales with weight, so the per 100 g column becomes a per cup column with a single multiplication. Flour is mostly carbohydrate and carries almost no fat, which is why the fat row looks like a rounding error next to the carbohydrate row.

Each cell is the per 100 g figure times 1.25, because a cup is 125 g. Carbohydrate: 125 x 0.763 = 95.4 g. Protein: 125 x 0.103 = 12.9 g. Fiber: 125 x 0.027 = 3.4 g. Sodium barely registers at 2.5 mg, since flour contains no added salt.

A cup of flour is 455 calories, so a two cup bread recipe starts at 910 calories before yeast, water or anything else joins the bowl. That arithmetic matters more to anyone portioning dough by weight than to anyone reading a label, because the label rounds to the nearest 5 calories per serving.

Bread flour, whole wheat and other flours

The 125 g cup belongs to all purpose flour. Other wheats mill differently, pack differently and settle differently, and the King Arthur chart lists each one at its own weight: bread flour at 120 g, whole wheat at 113 g, pastry flour at 106 g, "00" pizza flour at 116 g and cake flour at 120 g.

Whole wheat is the outlier that matters most, since it weighs 12 g less per cup than all purpose flour does on the same chart. Swapping it cup for cup without adjusting the liquid gives a wetter dough than the recipe intended, and the usual repair is to hold the weight and add water instead.

Note the two standards sitting side by side. The USDA table puts all purpose at 125 g, King Arthur at 120 g, and both are correct for their own method. Pick one, write it on the recipe card, and every future batch will repeat.

Rye, spelt, semolina and einkorn each carry a cup weight of their own, and any baguette or focaccia formula written by a mill states the figure in grams for exactly that reason. A flour that pours differently cannot share the number that belongs to all purpose wheat.

How many cups a five pound bag holds

A standard bag of all purpose flour is 5 lb, which is 2,268 g. At 125 g per cup that is 2,268 / 125 = 18.1 cups, and at the King Arthur 120 g standard it works out at 18.9 cups. Either way, a recipe asking for 8 cups uses a bit less than half the bag.

Those numbers are worth keeping for the shop. A weekend with two bread batches of 4 cups each takes 1,000 g, so one bag covers about two such weekends, and a 10 lb bag doubles the count. Flour keeps for months in a sealed container, though humidity in a coastal kitchen shortens that window and a pantry that smells of coffee will flavor the next loaf. Store the bag sealed, off the floor, away from the spice shelf.

Buying by weight also protects the conversion. A bag sold as 5 lb holds 2,268 g no matter how the flour settled on the truck, while a recipe written in cups holds a different amount every time someone scoops it. The bag is the fixed point in a system that otherwise floats.