How many cups of flour in a pound of wheat? Figuring this out is not as easy as one would hope!
You would not believe the amount of wheat measuring-flour calculating drama I’ve had here during the past few days. And here I thought that I was decent at math. In addition, I was under the impression that my brain still had at least a little bit of function-ability left. But wowza, figuring out how many cups of flour in a pound of wheat just about threw me over the edge. And unfortunately for you – you had to read my posts and deal with me giving you all kinds of weird information all week.
I think I have now figured this thing out. And I’m posting it here because, for the life of me, I could not find any answers when I did any internet searches. And believe you me, I did some big time internet searches. To the best of my knowledge, the following information is accurate, or at least it is as close as I could figure with what was left of my brain reserves after this week. I used Montana Gold, Chemical Free, Hard White Wheat in my calculations. Typically I order my wheat through Azure Standard. They offer great quality wheat at a reasonable price!
How many cups of flour in one pound of wheat?
1 pound of wheat = 2 cups of wheat
2 cups of wheat = 3 cups of flour
1 pound of wheat = 3 cups of flour
For me, since I currently pay about $1.00/pound of wheat, this breaks down to:
3 cups of flour = $1.00
1 cup of flour = $0.33
And now, I shall go take a long, long nap, because even though it shouldn’t have been nearly that complicated for me to figure out this information, it sent my brain into a crazy tailspin. My apologies to every one of you who got pulled into my confusion this week. I’m planning to continue sharing more of my Real Food – Low Cost calculations next week – after my nap.
Thank you for your calculations…I also grind wheat and use prairie gold in all recipes calling for flour. I was wondering (not to boggle your mind further) if you would happen to know how many calories in a cup of our fresh ground wheat?
Just because I don’t want Laura to over do it with the math…
I looked at my bag of Wheat Montana.
It says 1/4cup of berries = 100 calories.
So, finding a calculator, I get ~267 calories per cup of flour
according to Laura’s calculations above. Whew. Does that seem like
a lot?
Hope that helps!
That seems low to me. We usually say 400 per cup of whole wheat flour, 467 per cup of white here. (We calorie calculate everything)
The Wheat Montana bag says 1/4 cup = 100 cal
Walton Wheat says 1/2 cup = 326 cal {which means 1/4 cup = 163 cal}
The organic wheat I’ve purchased from UNFI said 1/4 cup = 150 cal
And depending on many cups of flour you measure from the pound of wheat {how much air} –
and how many calories you start with per cup…. Lots of variations available here!
Maybe go with the 150 cal/quarter-cup?
That would give you 400cal/cup if you get 3 cups flour from 2 cups berries.
whew.
Laura, you owe me! ;-)
Alison, I should have just let YOU answer! :D
SO glad you all figured that out for me. My brain definitely could not have gone there. :)
If you are speaking of “Wheat Berries Prairie Gold” from Natural Grocers, mine shows “serving size = 1/4 cup & 1/4 cup = 150 calories per serving.
I have always worked on the premis of 4 cops to a pound. Recently I have started weighing my flour 4 oz each. Works really well
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for the break down! Been a HH reader for a while, more stalker since I’ve never left a comment until now. ;) Our family loves your recipes!!!! And anyone reading this should know I’ve subsituted all butter/milk with coconut oil/vegan butter/coconut milk/egg subsitutes and it still tastes great!!! My son has allergies to dairy/eggs/peanuts/nuts so I’ve totally eliminated these items from our home. . I digress, sorry….
Laura:
What if you do not have access to a hard white wheat. What would you recommend? Lots of hard RED wheats or a soft white wheat. I should also say I am soooo new to the” grind your own wheat “world. So new in fact I don’t even have a grinder. Right now I am doing research about why I NEED to grind our own so I can present info to the hubby. I currently purchase King A’s ww. Does a hard red compare to king A’s?
Thanks for your help!
Laura has so many great posts on this topic! She has even prepared a letter to husbands full of reasons to purchase a grain mill. Check it out at this link.
https://www.heavenlyhomemakers.com/the-promised-letter-to-your-husbands-about-why-they-should-buy-you-a-grain-mills
Just wanted to let you know that if you like the flavor or whole wheat, you would be totally fine with hard red wheat. I grind my own flour and love hard red wheat in my bread. The hard white has a little less flavor so it works great for pizza crusts, cinnamon rolls, etc. where you want the flavor of what you’re putting with the dough to come out more than the flavor of the dough itself. But it would still be fine. The soft white wheat is great for pastries – cookies, cakes, brownies, pie crusts, etc. We have allergies to dairy and tree nuts here too and have learned to love coconut oil – it really does work great as a substitute for butter. Glad you’ve found ways to make it work too!
A hard red has a little more tannic acid than a hard white – so bread made with hard red can be just slightly more bitter than that made with hard white. King Arthur has a great tweak if the tannic acid bothers you, though – substitute 2 T. orange juice for 2 T. of the water in the recipe. I have no idea why that works, but it does. My family doesn’t seem to notice the difference between the red and the white, so I don’t use the orange juice trick unless I’m making a sweet bread, when I might notice the difference.
Hope that helps!
I have found that soft white wheat does not work with yeast breads/pizza dough/etc. It doesn’t have the stretch/rise because it doesn’t have as much gluten as the hard white wheat or hard red wheat. Good luck! LOVE my nutrimill :)
The recommendation I would make would be to do bread/rolls/bagels with the hard red wheat. For treats like cookies, sweet breads and cake, do the soft white wheat. For pizza dough, do 1/2 and 1/2 – I tried this last weekend and the dough was awesome. good luck!
Funny that this is posted here today! I was searching your site the other day thinking this info had to be here somewhere, cause you always have what I need to know and I couldn’t find it. It was late and I figured I’d just missed it in my sleepiness! Was gonna message you about it, but God must have passed my inquiry on for me! Thank you! :D
Especially because I grind all my whole grain flours, I measure all my flour by weight (ounces or grams) instead of volume (cups). It’s way more accurate and much easier – 8 oz of wheat berries = 8 oz flour, but can vary widely in volume measurement. A lot of my cookbooks offer the weight of flour to use in addition to the volume measurement. If the recipe I’m working off doesn’t offer the weight, I work on the premise that 1 cup of flour is about 4.5 oz (I’ve seen a range in different cookbooks from 4 to 5 ounces per cup, so I just take a middle of the road approach if it is not specified).
For me, an accurate kitchen scale is relatively inexpensive and completely indispensable. I use it to weigh not only my baking ingredients, but also to check the weight on lots of different cooking projects, homemade body-care recipes, soap-making projects, etc. If you decide to purchase one I recommend getting one that is accurate to 1 gram and has a option to plug it in, so you’re not totally dependent on batteries.
I’ve been wanting to get one, do you have any specific recommendations? Thanks!
I recently replaced my older kitchen scale with this:
Escali 136DK Alimento Stainless-Steel Top Scale
So far I’m really happy with it. It’s accurate to 1 gram, tare function, has an optional back-light on the display, measures in ounces, pounds and ounces, and grams. I love that it will weigh everything in ounces, instead of automatically counting pounds when you hit 16 ounces. It takes a standard 9-volt battery, which is great. I also bought the AC adapter so I don’t have to run down the battery life or worry about replacing it if it dies in the middle of a project. Also, the scale platform is stainless steel and totally removable for easy cleaning without compromising they electronics in the scale.
Almost every feature I’ve mentioned is an improvement over the last one I used. There are other good scales out there. This one is definitely not the cheapest, but it’s also not crazy expensive and it should last a good while. Like I said, I find my scale pretty indispensable.
Did you happen to weigh it after it was flour… was it still 1 pound?
I didn’t weigh it after I ground it, should have though, just to see the result!
I use King Arthur whole white wheat flour.
It comes in 5 lb. packages, with 76 servings (1/4 cup each). That equals 19 cups of flour. Soooo… if anyone is interested in that, there ya go. (5 lbs is 19 cups, so 1 lb of flour would be 3.8 cups in volume) LOL
HOW do you get your wheat so inexpensively??? I get prairie gold white wheat (not even organic) and it is .71/lb with a minimum of 50 pounds purchased.
If it is through azure standard, do you know if it is possible to get it in an area they don’t deliver to? (I’m in VA) Shipping would probably make the price too high anyway :/
Erica – I’m in VA too and am looking for a wheat source that won’t cost me an arm and a leg for shipping. I just purchased my first berries from Pleasant Hill Grain. It was still pricey but I wanted to get started. I’m still looking for a better source, maybe one where I can go and pick it up. Let me know if you find anything near VA. I’m in Northern VA about 30 miles west of DC.
Linda, I get mine from Quail Cove Farms.
They have drop off locations all throughout Virginia and Maryland.
I get my wheat from a Latter Day Saints Storehouse. If you look up Provident Living online and see if there is a location reasonably close to you. I pay $11.45 for 25 lbs, we purchase about 150 lbs at a time & store it in 5 lb buckets with gamma lids. We drive about 30 miles to pick up but in the longrun it is way less expensive than paying high shipping charges on such heavy wheat. I hope this helps.
Thank you for all your calculations!! I too was trying to calculate whether it would be cheaper for us to get a grain mill, wheat berries, and grind them versus buying 5lb. bags of organic whole wheat flour already ground. So this is saving me brain power! Although after doing my calculations, it’s actually cheaper for me to by the 5lb bags in the store. Where I buy them from, organic 5lb bags of white whole wheat flour is anywhere from $2.50 – $3.00 per bag. I know the benefits of freshly ground flour, but right now its cheaper for us to buy the bagged flour. I’d have to keep searching, but the cheapest I can get wheat berries is .91 lb.
The thing you have to remember is that, while the flour may be less expensive, it has probably been sitting on the shelf, in the warehouse, etc. for several months and loses a lot of nutrition in the process. The fresh ground wheat is a lot healthier.
Thank you so much for doing this Laura! Just thinking about figuring it out puts my brain in a cramp! :) This info will be useful. I printed out a little chart to put with my wheat berries. My wheat berries cost me 10¢ more per pound than yours. Still a good price!
I was also wondering where you get your wheat so cheaply! I buy mine from Country Life Natural Foods and I think it’s a pretty good deal–but I pay around $.55/pound for hard white wheat.
I buy my wheat from either Wheat Montana or Azure Standard.
Yikes, Laura! I just figured out you are paying $19.50 for a 50# bag of wheat berries??!!! Really?! I haven’t paid that little for y/e/a/r/s!
Even the Walton wheat I recently bought with a group truck purchase was over $25/bag ($28 I think).
And I much prefer the Wheat Montana. Last May I paid $32/bag for Prairie Gold {plus a round trip of close to 100 miles} That’s $.64/pound plus gas. :-\
I’m totally jealous that you’re able to get wheat for .39/lb. I pay $72 for a 40-lb bucket of hard white wheat. 1.80/lb!!! So its 1.80 just for the flour I need for one loaf of bread. Add in the cost of the other ingredients (I also pay $50 for 12 lbs of raw honey). So it’s about 2.50 for a loaf of bread. Granted, it’s way healthier than anything we could buy in the store but it would be really nice to be able to make it cheaper!
This is awesome! Now that I’ve seen how you do it I really need to work it out for how much I pay for wheat. I make a lot of 100% whole wheat bread and even my own cold cereal and I’m so curious to see how cheap it is!
We live in Utah and I have tried several ways to get wheat berries. Luckily we have a Roller Mills nearby that sells their wheat – at Costco we get a 40 lb bucket for $16.99. Not super cheap but great quality and it comes in a bucket! I have also found wheat in 50lb bags at a store called Kitchen Kneads – I compared it to Azure Standard and I think it was pretty comparable – about $20 for a 50 lb bag for organic. You do have to add in the shipping costs though. For Azure Standard, the minimum shippin on an order for our area is $15 for up to $200, then it is something like 5%, so that adds to the cost for us.
Honeyville Farms retail locations have an excellent price on wheat, and they have a store in Utah (sorry, I don’t know where). They don’t have organic, but I usually get my wheat in the AZ store for $16-18 per 50 lb bag. It goes on sale several times a year, so I try to catch it then.
I also found a link where people posted ways to buy grains in bulk. People from all over the U.S. posted where to find wheat in their area. Maybe this will be helpful for someone: http://moneysavingmom.com/2011/03/reader-tip-purchasing-grains-in-bulk.html
This information is so practical! Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience. I will definitely be referring to this post next time I grind wheat, because I know I won’t remember.
Laura –
In all the uproar, I hope that you haven’t felt like everyone jumped on you with all four feet about your math problems. (Pun intended)
I doubt I’m the only one who reads your blog and marvels at how you manage to keep all of these activities and boys and recipes, etc. all going simultaneously. I read and think, “Wow – now, this is a woman that has it figured out…or at least, knows what she’s going to research next.” There’s nothing I can do to help, so I just read and learn.
Then something like the wheat thing comes up, and the thought leaps to mind, “Hey! Here’s something I know about! I can CONTRIBUTE!” … and you get flooded with a ton of emails.
I would just like to say – I appreciate your blog very much; I read every post. (Even though I comment rarely.) You’ve inspired me to try things that it would never have occurred to me to attempt. (Vanilla extract, for one.) Thank you for all your hard work, and your graciousness in dealing with all of us over-eager corrective beavers.
Bake on!
Thank you so much for checking up on me about this. Nope, I defintely did not feel like everyone jumped on me, not even a little bit! I have appreciated everyones help on this so that I could post correct information. :)
This is a great resource for the weight of a cup of lots of different ingredients: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipe/master-weight-chart.html
They use very fluffy cups of flour (almost 4 cups per pound), where I usually use 5-ounce cups of most types of flour. Be sure to check what weight per cup your source is using when you are baking anything other than yeast bread!
Other than that, I have found this chart to be very reliable — I keep a copy handy in the kitchen. Once you know the weights of your ingredients, it is easy to calculate cost or nutrition facts.
Wow that is a great price for wheat. It costs me about $1 per pound. I’ve always figured it at 4 cups per pound of flour so that means 25 cents per cup for me.
OK…I am paying $30.70 for 50lbs of ORGANIC wheat. (Hard red winter)…I thought this was a good price, but maybe not?? How in the world are you only paying .39/lb.??? Is this the Montana wheat?? I have heard & maybe you know if this is true or not, that Montana wheat-although grown chemical free-the actually wheat SEED is GMO ??? Anyone else know anything about this?? Just curious, I want my wheat organic, but would like to find it cheaper is possible!
Thanks!!
HI Laura!
Saw your article on the cakes in a jar – pretty neat. Do you have any idea how long they stay fresh? I assume that since they can be shipped they must store for at least a reasonable amount of time.
Thank!
Tell the boys, Ian says hello!
The cakes she sent us to review say “best if eaten by 7-13-12”, which means that if they aren’t opened until July, they’ll stay fresh that long. Pretty awesome! I’ll be sure and tell the boys – they miss Ian, so be sure and tell him hello from all of us!
I need a good eastcoast supplier, can you tell me laura where I might get organic white wheat. I can get red wheat, but this month I tried white wheat flour from the store and I can NOT believe the difference in my baking, i love love it! I have spent too many hours trying to find a source so if you can direct me that would be great! Thanks
Thank you for having this calculation on your site! Making our own bread has been such a blessing.
Thanks for publishing the calculations. I have an interesting idea for everyone. Check with bulk suppliers, grain elevator owners (where farmers sell straight from the field)etc. We buy our wheat between twenty-five to twenty-nine cents per pound. That is $54.00 per hundred! Wheat is grown all across the country, so cut out these $72.00 per 40# bucket costs. I understand that this isn’t always a convenience for everyone, accessibility being key. But I would definitely look around. We all travel here and there for holidays, family gatherings, vacations, etc. A years supply can be picked up somewhere along many of these routes if we just plan ahead, for a huge savings!
Hi, where are you finding flour for about 39 cents per lb? I’m looking into buying a home grain mill, and the source I’d be buying from also sells wheat, but the cost is $48 for 50 lbs – nearly $1.00 per lb which I think is way too high.
Thanks!
Jan
I order it through my food co-op, Azure Standard. :)
First, I’ve purchased a 5lb bag of white unbleached wheat flour at the Cub grocery store on sale for $1.99 many times ($.40/lb) and regular price was $2.49 at the time ($.50/lb)
Second, if you want consistent results when measuring flour by volume, you should always sift your flour before you measure it. When recepies are written which call for flour, they should be giving the volume of sifted flour. The more time and vibrations your container of flour has experienced, the more settling will take place and the denser the flour. Without sifting you’ll use more flour than needed and your recepie may fail.
Furthermore, I sifted flour into a measuring cup (1 Cup) and it weighed 120 gr which equates to 3.8 C per pound – which is consistent with Stacie’s assessment of her 5lb bag of King Arther flour.
Scott
Where do you buy your whole wheat?? I can’t find it close to $.39 per pound!!
I get it from Azure Standard now, but the price has definitely gone up since I wrote this. :)