Welcome to the last installation of the Just Eat It: Brain Food 101 Wheat Flour series! In case you missed the first four, they are here:
- Quick v. Yeast Breads
- Whole Wheat v. White Flour
- Baking Experiment: All-Purpose versus Pastry Flour
- Baking With Wheat Flour: It’s All About the Protein
And for a special deal on the Chocomize chocolate I gave away last week, keep reading!
NO CAKE FLOUR? NO PROBLEM!
What do you do when a recipe calls for a particular ingredient, but there is none to be found in your kitchen? Do you simply look for another recipe that doesn’t require that ingredient, or cross your fingers that a simple ingredient substitution will do?
Several readers asked me if they could use all-purpose flour instead of cake flour. So I did a little research for them.
Apparently, cake flour is finer, lower in protein, and higher in starch than all-purpose flour. Oftentimes, cake flour is chlorinated to break down the gluten proteins to make the texture even more tender.
To make your own cake flour, simply mix 1/4 c. cornstarch with 1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour. Make sure it is well-mixed. Really, that’s all you need to do! Your resulting mixture will have more starch and less protein than the all-purpose flour you started with.
Remember, cake flour is typically finer than all-purpose, so the final product’s texture may be grainier.
I was going to do an experiment for you and compare baking with this substitution to baking with cake flour, but I couldn’t find cake flour at any stores near me! So, I guess I’ll be using 1/4 c. cornstarch + 1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour whenever I need cake flour, too!
CHOCOMIZE DISCOUNT!
Drooling over the chocolate in my Chocomize giveaway, but didn’t win? Enter “savvyeat” at checkout on Chocomize’s website to get 10% off!
This is a really interesting series! Is there a way to make your own pastry flour? I keep seeing recipes call for whole-wheat pastry flour, but I’ve never found it in stores!
According to joyofcooking.com , you can make pastry flour by mixing 1 1/3 c. all-purpose flour with 2/3 c. cake flour. So I guess if you make your own cake flour, you can then make your own pastry flour…
So if your recipe calls for 5 cups of cake flour do you use 5 cups of all-purpose flour and cornstarch togther?
Thanks,
Confused in Va
5 cups total. So mix together the cornstarch + AP flour, and measure out 5 cups of the mixture.
Thanks! Good to know I can substitute this!
It is so hard to find cake flour at my store, too!
this is such a great, informative post!
Great info! I literally read a recipe this morning that needed cake flour – I get so overwhelmed by all the different flours I just disregarded the recipe! Now I don’t have to!
Thanks for the tip! Good to know next time I’m scrounging for the cake flour only to find it’s expired! lol
great tip!
love this series so much! can’t wait until you publish a food science cookbook. ill be there for your tour 