Gram

A gram (g) is the basic metric unit of weight. A thousand grams make a kilogram (kg). Recipes from almost everywhere outside the US measure dry ingredients and often butter and liquids in grams. Many American baking recipes now give grams too, because weight is more reliable than volume. Older British books spell it gramme.

Why it works

A cup of flour can weigh anywhere from 110 g to 160 g depending on how you fill it. A gram is always a gram. That matters most in baking, where the ratio of flour to liquid, fat and leavening decides whether bread rises or a cake sets. Professional bakers write recipes as weights, often as a percentage of the flour weight, for this reason.

Small amounts are the exception. Most home scales are accurate to 1 g, which is not precise enough for 2 g of yeast or 3 g of baking soda. Use measuring spoons for those, or a small jeweler's scale that reads 0.1 g.

How to use it

Put a bowl on a digital kitchen scale, press the tare (zero) button, and add the ingredient until the display shows the weight you need. Press tare again before each new ingredient, and you can weigh a whole cake into one bowl.

Converting from US units:

US unit	Grams
1 ounce	28.35 g
1 pound	453.6 g
1 stick of butter	113 g
1 cup flour	about 120 to 125 g
1 cup granulated sugar	about 200 g

For water, 1 g is 1 milliliter, so 250 g of water is 250 ml. Milk and stock are very close. Oil is lighter (about 0.92 g per ml) and honey is heavier (about 1.4 g per ml).

Common mistakes

• Forgetting to tare the scale after putting the bowl on.
• Converting a gram amount to cups and back again. Each conversion adds error. If the recipe is in grams, weigh.
• Running a scale on low batteries. Readings drift and can stick.

In recipes

You will see "250 g plain flour", "100 g butter, softened" and "500 g ground beef". In Swedish and German recipes "g" may be written after a space or not, and "gr" sometimes appears for grams.