Don, my mom taught me to measure flour by scooping it up and leaving a big mound on top then taking a knife and cutting into the flour, down to the bottom and all the way across of the measuring cup a couple times, then use the back of the knife to level off the top of the cup. When I measure KABF or AP this way, I get about 155g or 5.5oz.
Craig,
You are correct that you can get over 5 ounces of KABF for a cup of flour measured out volumetrically as you noted. In my post to Don, I used the worst case conversion in the Mass-Volume Conversion Calculator at
http://tools.foodsim.com/.
As the post at Reply 5 at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,15122.msg149509/topicseen.html#msg149509 notes, the method you use is often called the "dip & level" method. That was the standard measuring method at General Mills up until October, 1989. GM used to have a Heritage page at its website that noted the change but GM recently re-did its website and got rid of the Heritage page. However, I found it this morning at the Wayback Machine, at
http://web.archive.org/web/20100105084108/http://www.gmflour.com/gmflour/ourheritage.aspx.
From October, 1989, the standard measuring method has been what is called the "spoon & level" method, which is the same as the Textbook method in the Mass-Volume Conversion Calculator. That method entails repeatedly lifting flour from a container into a measuring cup to the point of overfilling and then leveling off the cup. As noted in the above post, that is the method that King Arthur also recommends. However, if I were to guess, I would say that most people still use the dip & level method. I know of almost no one who measures out flour using the spoon & level method. So, whenever I use the Mass-Volume Conversion Calculator, for example, to convert a recipe stated in volume measurements to a baker's percent format, and the recipe does not say how the flour should be measured out (which is just about never), I use the Medium flour Measurement Method as my default method. In your case, to get over 5 ounces for a cup of KABF measured out volumetrically using the dip & level method, you would need to use the Medium x2 method in the Mixed-Mass Conversion Calculator, which adds shaking to the scooping.
As noted in Reply 5 cited above, the Mixed-Mass Conversion Calculator was created by member November after he and I had conducted literally hundreds of weighings of flour samples using whatever flours we had on hand and several different measuring cup sizes. The tool still isn't perfect but it is the best we have on this forum. That tool was designed specifically for people who do not have scales or choose not to use them for some reason. I suspect that most people do not use that tool because it is not the easiest tool to navigate, especially for those who do not have some technical skills. Fortunately, we have had pretty good success convincing our members who are serious about their pizza making to invest in good digital scales.
Peter
