What is it and what does it do?
Flours are the basic building blocks of cakes. This seemingly plain powder allows bakers to create virtually limitless goodies. But what how does it actually affect our baked goods and how do we choose?
Flour is a main part of what gives our cakes structure and it determines how your cake holds up, how moist it is, how it tastes, how it looks, its nutritional value. Most of the flour that we use for baking comes from wheat.
Of course we can’t talk about flour without talking about the dirty word gluten. Gluten basically just means how elastic and chewy the cake will be. I won’t go into the science of it, just know that lower protein level means less gluten, which results in a less chewy and elastic cake (like angel food cake) and more protein means more gluten resulting in chewy goodies (like bread). We usually try to have less gluten in cakes for a light and tender texture. There are other factors that minimise gluten development: less liquid, less mixing strength and duration, added baking soda or powder, more fat, more sugar, less salt, appropriate acidity level, etc.
Cakes are mostly held up by starch, around 70% of the flour weight. There’s simply too much liquid and sugar in cakes for gluten to form like it does in bread.
Health implications
Unless the eater is gluten intolerant, there is no “right” amount of gluten. The appropriate amount of gluten depends on the item you are baking and the texture that you want.
What’s tested
Flour sold in North American supermarkets are usually named according to its function, such as all purpose flour, cake flour, bread flour, etc. Flour around the world are manufactured and categorised differently.Some of the flour tested are not meant for cakes and you would rarely find any cake recipes using it, but curiosity just got me to try them anyways and see what would happen.
Seven types of common flour are tested to compare the differences in its appearance, taste and smell, texture and moisture level. These are my opinions based on the batches that I made. These are truly a 1:1:1:1 ratio pound cake, as in 1 part sugar, 1 part butter, 1 part egg, 1 part flour. This is not a recipe I would recommend for everyday baking, since it makes a dry and dense cake. But it’s a great recipe for me to control everything and observe what changes when I substitute out one ingredient at a time. These tests are based on my own senses, so that although some flour is supposed to make a difference in theory, I report based on my test results, such as cake flour should have a darker crust in theory, but in reality it looked the same as the All Purpose Unbleached flour from my batches. Overall, wholewheat flour and self-rising flour differ the most from the control, which I chose to be all-purpose flour unbleached.
What were you experiences with baking with these flours? Are there any other flours that you would like to see tested? Share with us in the comments!
What does each ingredient do?
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This is the most common type of flour in households. As its name suggests, it's a good flour to use for most baked goods. It's versatile and easy to find in store.
It has about 12-13% of protein depending on the brand. In US south and Pacific Northwest, all purpose flour has about 7.5-9.9% protein. The ones tested has about 12%. Since this has medium level of gluten, a good balance between cake flour and bread flour can be used to approximate it.
Similar to its unbleached sibling in terms of functions. But it will make paler cookies and baked goods compared to unbleached flour. People with a sensitive palate may be able to detect a taste different - I am not one of them. Flour becomes whiter overtime and chemicals have been added to bleached flour to speed up the ageing process.
Bleached flour with certain additives used in bleached flour such as potassium bromate, benzoyl peroxide, calcium peroxide, azodicarbonamide, are not allowed in different countries.
Wholewheat flour is a great option for baking healthier. It contains more nutritions and has a higher glycemic index compared to the other flours in this list, meaning it takes longer to digest and maintains blood sugar level better. Wholewheat uses every part of the wheat kernel, called endosperm, germ, and bran. All purpose flour only contains endosperm. The bran and germ are what gives wholewheat flour more nutritious. But these also hinders the flour’s ability to create gluten, meaning the flour will be less chewy. The germ and bran also becomes rancid faster, which means that wholewheat flour doesn’t last as long as all purpose flour.
Using wholewheat flour will create denser, darker, and more flavourful baked goods.
Wholewheat flour absorbs more liquid compared to all purpose flour. So for a recipe to be converted into using wholewheat, more liquid must be added, or else the cake be drier than intended.
If you want to substitute a recipe with wholewheat flour, a general rule of thumb is to substitute 50% of the all purpose flour with wholewheat flour. That is, if recipe called for 100g all purpose flour, you can change it to 50g all purpose flour and 50g wholewheat flour. Also add an additional 1-2 tbsp of liquid to the original recipe.
Bread flour is great for bread because of its ability to develop gluten. It has between 12-13% gluten, allowing it to create chewy and delicious breads. It is not generally used for cakes.
If using bread flour in a cake recipe, but still wishes for a tender cake, remember to minimise mixing and bake immediately so that gluten does not have the opportunity to develop. The high ratio of liquid and sugar in cake recipes also help hinder gluten development.
Pastry flour has less protein, only 8-9%, allowing it to create tender baked goods. It’s best used for things that wants a crumbly or flaky products like pie crusts.
Cake flour can produce cakes that are tender and moist. Cake flour has the least protein out of this list at about 7.5-8%. It is always finely ground and bleached, so it shares some properties with the bleached all purpose flour.
Cake flour are slightly acidic, and acid helps cakes set sooner. When a cake is set sooner, it doesn’t need to be baked for as long, which keeps more moisture inside the cake, resulting a more moist cake.
Cake flour produces a finer texture by evenly distributing fat and tiny air bubbles in the cake batter. Batters with cake flour can hold more sugar, which in turn also helps increase the moisture of the cake.
Most recipes using cake flour will also use a chemical leavening, such as baking powder or baking soda.
Self rising flour is actually just flour with baking powder added to it already. This saves us a step with measuring out baking powder when using in a recipe. About 5% of its weight is baking powder. Since there is already leavening added, it creates the most rise out of all the flour and makes the most tender cake, but the same effect can be achieved with the other flours if you add baking powder to it.
Just keep in mind that since there’s already baking powder in it, you can’t use self rising flour in recipes that don't need chemical leavening, such as yeast leavened bread.
