What Is The Difference Between Pastry Flour And Cake Flour

Wondering what the difference between cake flour, bread flour, and pastry flour is? Or trying to figure out which one to use? Read on for some expert cooking advice from Yankee Food Editor Amy Traverso.

QUESTION:
What's The Deviation between Cake Flour and Pastry Flour

What is the divergence between cake flour and pastry flour? And what nigh bread flour? Is information technology okay to substitute all-purpose flour in recipes that phone call for a specific type of flour?

ANSWER

To put it only, choosing the right flour is all most decision-making the amount of gluten in your dough. Then what is gluten? It'south a protein structure that makes dough both firm and rubberband — think of a well-kneaded bread dough and how it feels like a big rubber band. Staff of life flour comes from "difficult" flour, which has a higher protein content and thus produces more than gluten, making it perfect for pizza dough, bread, and any other recipe that needs a footling more elasticity and cohesion.

The Difference between Cake Flour and Pastry Flour | Yankee Kitchen

Pastry flour is made with "soft" flour, pregnant it has much less poly peptide content and produces less gluten. With the gluten bands, doughs made with pastry flour are tender, and flaky and don't hold together equally firmly. But that'due south but the fashion we like it. After all, who wants a condom piecrust? Block flour has even less poly peptide content than pastry flour but not by much. It has merely enough poly peptide to give the block a picayune construction, simply not enough to go far tough.

All-purpose flour, which is a alloy of difficult and soft flours, falls in the middle of this gluten spectrum, and it works well in well-nigh broiled goods. Your cakes might non exist quite as tender, but in most cases they'll yet come out beautifully. It's all a matter of degree. Cookies, piecrusts, muffins, quick breads, and scones all do well with all-purpose flour.

Gluten development is also the reason why recipes instruct yous not to overmix your dough. Once you add water (or whatsoever other depression-fat liquid) to flour, gluten bands start forming and the more yous knead or stir the dough, the more than these elastic bands first connecting. If you are using all-purpose flour in a cake or piecrust, be sure to stop mixing just when everything comes together. — Amy Traverso

This post was first published in 2014 and has been updated.

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