Many baking recipes call for amounts of sifted flour. When flour is sifted and then measured by volume (in measuring cups), the amount of flour will be less than if the flour was not sifted. I’ve already revealed that sifting dry ingredients together is a waste of time. But when you must have your flour sifted before you measure it, and you don’t have a sifter, what can you do?
First, there is a difference between sifted flour and flour, sifted in recipes. When a recipe calls for sifted flour, it means you should sift the flour and then measure out the specified amount from already sifted flour.
Also, you do not need a crank-handle flour sifter to sift flour. You can use a fine-mesh strainer. These instructions are for when you have no way at all to sift flour.
While sifting, purportedly, has other purposes, the biggest problem you’ll have if you don’t have a sifter is getting the amount of flour right. If a recipe calls for a cup of SIFTED flour and you measure out a cup of unsifted flour, you will be using more flour than is called for in the recipe. It is not that much more, but enough to throw off very precise baking recipes.
While absolute perfection may not be necessary, you need a way of estimating how much less flour per cup, sifted flour gives. To substitute unsifted all-purpose flour for one cup of sifted flour use:
- 1 cup minus 2 tablespoons, all-purpose flour
This will give you approximately the same amount of flour as one cup of sifted flour. Here are some further conversions:
- 1.5 cups sifted = 1.5 cups minus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 2 cups sifted = 2 cups minus 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 2.5 cups sifted = 2.5 cups minus 5 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 3 cups sifted = 3 cups minus 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
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