[Sca-cooks] flour query

[Terry Decker]

Cake flour is pastry flour.  Usually it runs 3 to 8% protein.  All purpose 
flour may run between 7 and 10% protein.  Bread flour runs from about 9 to 
14%.  There are no hard fast rules about what amount of protein constitutes 
a specific type of flour.  I tend to use all purpose unbleached flour, 
unless I can get my hands on whole wheat flour without all the graham.  My 
source for whole wheat pastry flour has dried up, so I most often use Gold 
Medal Unbleached.

A cup of flour is roughly 4 ounces.  If you are measuring by weight, sifting 
is immaterial.  If you are measuring by the cup, it helps to know whether 
the recipe is calling for sifted flour or scoop and level.  If I'm baking 
bread, I don't generally worry about the niceties of measuring by the cup as 
I tend to go by the feel of the dough.  Finer baking I prefer to use actual 
weights.

Bear

>
> A redaction recipe I looked at suggested using pastry flour to more 
> closely resemble medieval flour.
>
> Hmm...I know of all-purpose flour (bleached or unbleached) whole wheat 
> flour, bread flour, and cake flour  (and self rising, and the speciality 
> flours I have seem graham etc.)
>
> but what is pastry flour?
>
> (and bread flour has more gluten than all purpose, while cake flour has 
> less -- and how much is more and how much is less??? sheesh)
>
> Also read that 3 c of flour is a pound, but remember that it was about 4 
> 1/3 cups  (about twice that of a pound of sugar...)
>
> does sifting your flour before measuring make that much difference?
>
>
> Arianwen ferch Arthur
> "Outside of a dog a book is man's best friend. And inside of a dog it's 
> too dark to read." G. Marx