cake flour or......?

Cake flour is made from the endosperm of soft spring wheat. Sometimes it's also called pastry flour. It has a lower protein/gluten content than either all-purpose or bread flour which is usually milled from hard red winter wheat. Therefore, due to its lower gluten content, it results in a softer crumb.

Oftentimes, cake flour is premixed with leavening for a "self-rising" cake flour used frequently for southern style biscuts and other types of baked goods with super-tender centers.

Rose Levy Berenbaum suggests using bleached all-purpose flour if cake flour is not readily available. Apparently, bleaching process roughens up the flour grains somewhat making it easier to achieve a tender crumb than when using unbleached all-purpose. She emphasizes, however, that when subbing the bleached AP for cake it's essential to sift the flour into the measuring cup and level with a straight edge and then sift again with whatever leavening you are using. 

This worked really well when I was making cakes for SMTs that we did when she was promoting her new book and General Mills flour. 

She's lovely, BTW, and could write an amazing culinary gossip column. ;)

I'm not sure if the UK flour is hard wheat or not.  But they have "plain flour" which is not leavened. 

You can replace a tbsp or two of flour with cornstarch (cornflour) and that will make it lighter for cake baking. 

Cake flour will have less protein than regular "AP" flour.  AP will be about 11 or 12%; Cake flour will be around 9%.  Bread flour will be about 14%  Do the calculation from the nutritional information label data.  I assume they give that data in the UK; it has been a long time since I was there and can't recall.

Some substitution of corn starch for flour will work to reduce the protein level.  I've heard of people cutting AP by up to 50% but I don't particualrly like the result of that in anything but a genoise sheet used for rolling into a Roulade.

... and I've always agreed with her because the difference is difficult, if not impossible, to tell!

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by foodnfoto 

Rose Levy Berenbaum suggests using bleached all-purpose flour if cake flour is not readily available. Apparently, bleaching process roughens up the flour grains somewhat making it easier to achieve a tender crumb than when using unbleached all-purpose. She emphasizes, however, that when subbing the bleached AP for cake it's essential to sift the flour into the measuring cup and level with a straight edge and then sift again with whatever leavening you are using.