Kendra is making bread, but the recipe she’s using makes 4 loaves. She only wants to make one loaf. The changed recipe calls for 2 1/2

Question

cups of flour and sugar combined. If the original recipe calls for 2 cups of sugar, find the amount of flour (in cups) in the original recipe.

Answer 1

Let's denote the amount of flour in the original recipe as \( F \) (in cups). According to the problem, the original recipe calls for 2 cups of sugar and \( F \) cups of flour, making the total combined amount of flour and sugar:

\[ F + 2 = \text{Total amount of flour and sugar} \]

Kendra is making a modified recipe that combines the flour and sugar to a total of \( 2.5 \) cups.

Since the original recipe makes 4 loaves, we need to scale down to find the equivalent amounts for 1 loaf. Since Kendra is using the modified recipe for just 1 loaf, we need to express the total from the original recipe also based on 1 loaf.

The total amount of flour and sugar for 4 loaves, using the original recipe, would be:

\[ F + 2 \text{ (for 4 loaves)} \]

For 1 loaf, Kendra needs:

\[ \frac{F + 2}{4} \]

Setting this equal to \( 2.5 \) cups gives us the equation:

\[ \frac{F + 2}{4} = 2.5 \]

Now, we can solve for \( F + 2 \):

1. Multiply both sides by 4: \[ F + 2 = 2.5 \times 4 \] \[ F + 2 = 10 \]

2. Now, solve for \( F \): \[ F = 10 - 2 \] \[ F = 8 \]

Thus, the amount of flour in the original recipe is:

\[ \boxed{8} \text{ cups} \]