No, no, don’t use your measuring cup to scoop your flour! You need to pour the flour into your measuring cup so it doesn’t compress. Then be sure to take the back of a knife and level the cup. Oh, by the way, you probably should take that knife and stir up all the flour before you start
scooping; it settles during shipping. And yeah, you need to do this whole procedure with each cup you measure out.
Or, you could use a scale.
While the rest of the world weighs most ingredients, we, here in the States, measure them. And measuring is not especially accurate. Is a cup of bran the same as a cup of whole-wheat flour? Not by weight. In fact, a cup of unsifted white flour will weigh five ounces, while a cup of sifted flour will weigh only four ounces. And if you’re baking bread that uses eight cups of flour, then you’ve just added one full cup of flour. In baking that leads to disaster.
Using a scale is easier and much more accurate. Ingredients can be added by fractions of an ounce or a gram at a time. (I’ve even used my digital scale to weigh a letter for postage. Try doing that with a measuring cup!)
You can use your scale to portion ingredients too. Make 12 eight-ounce burgers. Add one-third pound chicken breast. Add one kilo cooked potatoes.
I recommend using a digital scale, and one that measures both in imperial (pounds/ounces) and metric (grams/kilograms), like this Soehnle 66522 Futura Digital Food Scale.
It measures up in good looks, too.
Buy the Soehnle 66522 Futura Digital Food Scale.