: Meaning of 'sift together' What is the exact meaning of the phrase 'sift together'? If I need to 'sift together' flour, baking power, baking soda, and salt, does that mean put each one into the sifter sequentially, operating

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Or maybe I'm supposed to dump all these things into the sifter at once and then sift until it's empty?

Bingo.

Bonus points if you can tell me if I still need to stir ingredients which I have 'sifted together' in order to mix them.

Nope. The sifting process and subsequent stirring in of other ingredients should do the job just fine.

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Elendil's answer has it. I'd just respond to one other element of the question:

Perhaps I should dump all the ingredients into a bowl, mix them with a
spoon, then sift the resulting mixture?

Usually not necessary, but you can. (Better yet, use a whisk instead of a spoon.) It really depends on the recipe and how critical it is to have things like leaveners (baking soda/powder) or other "clumpy" ingredients distributed evenly.

In a large recipe where you can't fit all the ingredients in the sifter at once, you may particularly want to "pre-mix" the ingredients before sifting. Or, alternatively, sift everything twice to ensure distribution.

(It seems like many years ago this double sifting was fairly common in certain applications. But I don't think many people do it anymore.)

Lastly, I'd note that in some recipes the goal of sifting is to aerate the dry ingredients as well as mixing them. In that case, you definitely don't want to stir after sifting, since you'll defeat the purpose of sifting in the first place.