When is a kilogram not a kilogram?

[knormie]

I bought two 1-Kg bags of Molino farina di grano tenero tipo 00 at a neighborhood Italian market this week. I also picked up a second digital scale at Costco. Impulsively, I put the two together and found that neither bag weighed 1000 grams. I checked my old scale, and same result. Even in the bag, they were about 990 grams. Without the bag, 983.
The best by / lot number on the bottom read:
200512
025091
Could this really be 6 year old, dried out flour? Seems like fresh flour to me.
Can you FBers weigh your kilo bags of Italian flour and post the values here? I know that it is a trifling bit of flour, I'm just curious to know if it is consistent.

[RandyJ]

Re: When is a kilogram not a kilogram?

I can see the weight of the bag contents being off by a few grams. I am sure that if you got a number of different bags that some would be over and others under. It would be very hard to very precise when mechanically filling the bags at a high speed on a filling line.

Randy

[Les]

Re: When is a kilogram not a kilogram?

I recall weighing one of the first bags I got from FB and it was amazingly spot on. I haven't bothered to check it since then.

:Edit: Buy your flour from James

[GianniFocaccia]

Re: When is a kilogram not a kilogram?

I wonder what role humidity plays in packing and storing flour?

[brickie in oz]

Re: When is a kilogram not a kilogram?

Without the bag, 983.

17 grams is about 3 level teaspoons, its probably moisture that have escaped since packaging.

[texassourdough]

Re: When is a kilogram not a kilogram?

Not sure what the specs are for moisture on Italian flour but US flour is about 14% moisture when milled. For simplicity, lets assume they are the same! So 1000 grams would include 140 grams of water. Losing 10 grams of water would be pretty minor. Much flour does dry out in storage and thereby lose weight. If you live in a highly humid area or have a really rainy period, flour can gain weight. A couple of years ago my favorite pizzaria adjusted their dough formula by reducing their "Baker's Percentage" as measured by 5 percent after their flour got "wet" from a unique high-humidity spell here in San Antonio.

[petanque]

Re: When is a kilogram not a kilogram?

When I worked in a pizzeria when making the dough there was always an adjustment to the amount of water (we made patches using a 10 Kg bag of flour) to be made for the ?dryness? of the flour.