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Water:
grams to cups.
One cup of water weighs 240 g (240 ml), making it the simplest and most precisely defined conversion in cooking. Water is the reference liquid from which all density calculations derive — if you know how water measures, everything else is relative.
Water: grams to cups
Approximate cup fractions for common gram amounts. Based on 240 g per cup.
| Grams | Cups (approx) | Decimal |
|---|---|---|
| 25 g | ⅙ | 0.10 |
| 50 g | ¼ | 0.21 |
| 100 g | ½ | 0.42 |
| 150 g | ⅔ | 0.63 |
| 200 g | ¾ | 0.83 |
| 250 g | 1 ⅛ | 1.04 |
| 500 g | 2 ⅙ | 2.08 |
Water: cups to grams
Based on 240 g per cup.
| Volume | Grams (g) |
|---|---|
| 1 cup | 240 g |
| ¾ cup | 180 g |
| ½ cup | 120 g |
| ⅓ cup | 80 g |
| ¼ cup | 60 g |
| 1 tbsp | 15 g |
| 1 tsp | 5 g |
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Water as the universal density reference
Water has a density of exactly 1.0 g/ml at 4°C, and approximately 0.998 g/ml at 20°C (room temperature). Since 1 US cup equals 236.6 ml, a cup of water at room temperature weighs about 236–237 g. Recipes and ingredient databases round this to 240 g for simplicity — a convention that slightly overestimates water weight but keeps arithmetic clean. The practical difference between 237 g and 240 g in a bread recipe is nil. For scientific or industrial applications where exact water weight matters, use 237 g per cup; for recipe purposes, 240 g per cup is the standard.
Water in bread baking: hydration percentages explained
In bread baking, water quantity is expressed as a percentage of the flour weight — called baker's percentage. A 70% hydration dough uses 70 g of water for every 100 g of flour. This convention only works in grams — you cannot meaningfully express "0.7 cups of water per cup of flour" and have it be useful at different recipe scales. Professional bread recipes are always written in grams because the relationship between flour and water weight determines everything about dough texture, fermentation, and crust. Understanding the cup-to-gram conversion for water (240 g per cup) is the entry point to this entire system of thinking about bread.
Frequently asked questions
- How many grams is 1 cup of water?
- 1 cup of water weighs 240 g (or more precisely 237 g at room temperature — recipes round to 240 g).
- How many ml is 240 g of water?
- 240 g of water equals 240 ml (since water density ≈ 1 g/ml at room temperature).
- How many cups is 1 liter of water?
- 1 liter = 1000 g of water. 1000 g ÷ 240 g/cup ≈ 4.17 cups.
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