What Is the Difference Between Cake Flour & All-Purpose Flour?
For people who are new to baking, gazing at the seemingly endless varieties of flour on the grocery store shelves can be overwhelming. While all-purpose flour sounds like the best choice for all jobs, specialty flours such as cake flour are often a better choice for certain baking projects. Knowing the differences between types of flour can mean success or failure in a recipe. Does this Spark an idea?
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Flour Basics
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Flour is made from wheat and contains two main components: starch and protein. When mixed with water, the proteins in flour bind together to form gluten. Gluten creates elasticity in dough and traps the gases produced by yeast, which is what makes bread rise. For baked goods like bread, more gluten is a good thing to create a chewy texture; for cakes and pastries, the less gluten, the better for a softer, less chewy end product.
Categories
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Flour is categorized by its protein content. Bread flour has the highest percentage of protein, from 12-14 percent. As its name implies, it is ideal for bread, and can also be successful in pasta recipes. All-purpose flour has a protein content of 10-12 percent. It can be used in just about any recipe, but may not produce the perfect results that more specialized flours will create. Cake flour (6-8 percent) and pastry flour (8-10 percent) have the lowest protein content, making them unsuitable for bread but perfect for cakes and pastries.
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Cake Flour
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Cake flour is defined by having the lowest protein content of any flour, and also by the bleaching process that it undergoes which makes it light, yet strong enough to rise even when mixed with sugar and water. It has a silky texture and produces a fine crumb that makes it ideal for delicate cakes. Cake flour is also suitable for pie crusts, cookies and pastries.
All-Purpose Flour
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All-purpose flour, unlike cake flour, has enough protein for bread-making, and like cake flour, can also be used to make cakes, cookies, and pastries, although the outcome will not be quite the same. All-purpose flour, sometimes called AP flour in recipes, can be found bleached or unbleached, which affects nothing but its color. When using AP flour in place of bread flour, add an extra tablespoon per cup; when using it in place of cake flour, subtract 2 tablespoons per cup.
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References
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