Bread Flour: Cups to Grams
Bread flour weighs exactly what all-purpose weighs on the King Arthur chart — 120 g a cup. The difference between them is real, but it lives in the dough, not on the scale.
Bread flour conversion table
| Cups | Grams | Ounces |
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Same weight as all-purpose — and why that's correct
People expect bread flour to weigh more. It is milled from hard wheat, it feels stronger in the hand, and bread recipes treat it as the heavy-duty option — so a chart that lists it at the identical 120 g per cup as all-purpose flour looks like a mistake. It isn't. A cup measures how much flour fits in a volume, and two wheat flours of similar fineness, spooned and levelled the same way, hold very close to the same mass. What the extra protein in bread flour changes is what the flour does once water arrives: it builds a stronger, more elastic gluten network, which is why bread flour gives chewier loaves and all-purpose gives tender ones. None of that shows up on a scale.
The practical gift of the identical figure is swapping: on this chart you can exchange all-purpose and bread flour gram-for-gram or cup-for-cup without touching the recipe's totals. The crumb will change — chewier one way, softer the other — but the dough's hydration stays where the author balanced it. The full flour chart, including the flours that genuinely do weigh differently, is on the main flour page.
Measuring bread flour for dough
Bread flour gets the standard spoon-and-level treatment: fluff it in the bag or bin, spoon it into the cup, level with a knife. Bread bakers have an extra reason to care — dough is usually built from several cups, so a scooping habit that adds a few percent per cup quietly tightens every loaf you make, and stiff dough gets blamed on the yeast, the weather, everything except the cup. Weighing ends the argument: tare the bowl, add flour to the grams the converter gives, and your dough hydration is the recipe's hydration.
One bread-specific note: bread flour is often measured straight from a bin where it has sat compressed under its own weight. Flour settles in storage. Give the bin a stir before spooning, or the first cup out of a fresh bag — light and aerated — and the cup from the bottom of an old bin will be two different ingredients at the same nominal volume.
Frequently asked questions
How many grams is 1 cup of bread flour?
120 grams per US cup on the King Arthur Baking chart, spooned and levelled — identical to all-purpose flour on the same chart.
Can I substitute all-purpose flour for bread flour by weight?
Yes. Both are charted at 120 g per cup, so gram-for-gram and cup-for-cup swaps keep the recipe's totals intact. Expect a texture change — bread flour builds stronger gluten and a chewier crumb — but not a weight change.
Why do some charts list bread flour heavier than all-purpose?
Different publishers test and round differently, and some charts are built from scooped rather than spooned cups. This site follows the King Arthur chart end-to-end, where both flours are 120 g; pick one chart per recipe and stay with it.
Does bread flour need a different measuring technique?
No — spoon and level, exactly like all-purpose. Do stir flour that has been sitting in a bin first, because stored flour settles and a settled cup weighs more than the chart's 120 g.
Related pages
- Flour: cups to grams — the full flour chart and the 120 g vs 125 g question
- Whole wheat flour: cups to grams — the flour that really does weigh less — 113 g per cup
- Table salt: cups to grams — bread's other small-but-mighty ingredient, by the teaspoon
Data sources: King Arthur Baking Ingredient Weight Chart and USDA FoodData Central. Weights are per US customary cup (236.588 mL); other cup sizes are scaled by volume ratio. See the data sources & method page for how values were chosen.