Cake flour is low in protein and gluten, making it ideal for cakes but not cookies or bread. It’s best to use it in recipes that call for it, but it can be made at home by combining cornstarch and flour. It can also be used in salsa and gravy recipes.
Cake flour can be a wonderful ingredient when used in the right recipes, or it can dramatically destroy the most delicious dish you planned. It is a very finely ground wheat flour that is low in protein and low in gluten. This makes it ideal for most cakes, as the name suggests, but a poor choice for things like cookies. In other words, it’s debatable whether it’s a good idea to substitute this flour in recipes that don’t call for it, except perhaps cake recipes.
The simple answer to how a person uses cake flour is to use it in recipes where it’s called for. These are usually cupcake or cake recipes. Because flour can be occasionally lumpy, it’s a good idea to use a sieve and sift through it before measuring, although bakers differ on whether this step is necessary. Sieving might provide more accurate measurements and produce a better cake or cupcake, but many bakers say their results are delicious without it.
Some cookie plus cakel recipes can also work with cake flour. The medium-hard cookie like the classic tollbooth, peanut butter, or snickerdoodle likely won’t benefit from using cake flour. In fact most bakers will notice a distinct difference when the dough is mixed and when forming the cookies have a slippery or melting texture which makes things difficult. The final taste and texture are also quite different.
Cake flour is usually completely inappropriate for other baking needs, such as bread. The bread benefits from the glutinous flour which helps make the dough possible. Given the low gluten content of most cake flours, their use in bread is not recommended at all. Choosing bread flours would be more likely to create a better dough.
Some suggestions suggest that cake flour will replace all-purpose flour if an additional two tablespoons of flour are added for every cup. Cooks disagree on whether this suggestion is workable. Many find it simply easier to stick to the recipe’s recommended flour.
One cool tip involves making your own cake flour from all-purpose flour. A combination of two tablespoons of cornstarch and 0.75 cup of flour can substitute for one cup of cake flour. Sieving is recommended to produce the best blend.
Sweet treats naturally come to mind when discussing this refined flour, but there is at least one other common food that can be made with it. Many people swear by using cake flour in salsa because it dissolves quickly and is likely to produce fewer lumps than all-purpose flour. Again the low protein and low gluten content tends to make gravy recipes better, although many people do well with the all-purpose flour.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
