Put an empty bowl on the scale, select grams, and tare it to zero. Add flour until the display reaches the weight in your recipe. Weigh in a separate bowl so excess flour is easy to remove.
Use the recipe weight
King Arthur Baking uses 120 g for one cup of its all-purpose flour. Follow the recipe author's weight when available because a cup-to-gram conversion depends on the ingredient and the recipe's convention. Confirm the display says grams before you start.
Add the last few grams slowly
If the recipe calls for 240 g, pour until you reach about 220 g and add the rest with a spoon. At 246 g, remove a little at a time until it returns to 240 g. Correcting an overshoot is much easier before you mix the flour with anything else.
Recover from a reset
If the scale goes to sleep and loses the tare, use a second empty bowl. Zero the scale with that bowl on it, then transfer the flour. If you are doubling a recipe, write the new target down before measuring so you can check it at a glance.
Try a comparison
Measure one cup using the recipe's volume method and weigh it afterward. How close is the result to the recipe weight?
Check the setup before you pour
Set the scale on a firm, level counter. Make sure the bowl rests entirely on the platform and does not touch a wall or another container. Check that the reading settles at zero after taring. If you use a large mixing bowl that blocks the display, switch to a smaller weighing bowl and transfer the flour afterward.
Keep a written target for batches
Suppose your recipe calls for 175 g of flour and you are making two batches. Write 350 g if you are mixing them together, or weigh 175 g into each of two bowls if you are preparing them separately. Label the bowls if they also contain different kinds of flour. Once flour is mixed with another ingredient, you may have little way to tell which bowl received which quantity.
Record the convention you used
If a recipe gives only cups and you have a weight conversion from its author, note that conversion next to the recipe. The next time you bake it, you can repeat the same measurement. If you compare a cup measurement with a weighed one, record how you filled and leveled the cup so you know what produced the difference.
