A person sifting cake flour.
Cake flour can be a wonderful ingredient when used in the right recipes, or it can dramatically ruin the most delicious dish planned. It is a very finely ground wheat flour, low in protein and low in gluten. This makes it great for most cakes, as the name implies, but a poor choice for things like cookies. In other words, it’s questionable whether it’s a good idea to substitute this flour in recipes that don’t call for it, except maybe cake recipes.
Cake flour is ideal for most cakes because it is low in protein and low in gluten.
The simple answer to how a person uses cake flour is to use it in recipes where it is needed. Usually these are cupcake or cake recipes. Since flour can occasionally be grainy, it’s a good idea to use a sieve and sift before measuring, although bakers differ as to whether or not this step is necessary. Sifting can provide more accurate measurements and result in a better cake or cupcake, but many bakers say their results are delicious without it.
Cake flour is a very finely ground wheat flour.
Some more cake-like cookie recipes can also work with cake flour. Ordinary hard cookies, like the classic tollhouse, peanut butter, or snickerdoodle, are unlikely to benefit from the use of cake flour. In fact, most bakers will notice a distinct difference when the dough is mixed, and when the cookies are formed, they will have a slippery or melty texture that makes things difficult. The final flavor and texture are also quite different.
Cake flour is generally totally unsuitable for other baking needs like bread. The bread benefits from the glutinous flour, which helps in kneading. Given the low gluten content of most pastry flours, their use in baking is not recommended. Choosing bread flours would be more likely to create a better dough.
There are some suggestions that cake flour will replace all-purpose flour if two extra tablespoons of flour are added to each cup. Cooks disagree on whether this suggestion is feasible. Many simply find it easier to stick to the recipe-recommended flour.
An interesting suggestion concerns how to create cake flour from all-purpose flour. A combination of two tablespoons of cornstarch and 0.75 cups of flour can replace one cup of cake flour. Sifting is recommended to produce the best mix.
Sweets naturally come to mind when the conversation turns to this fine flour, but there is at least one other common food that can be made with it. Many people swear by using cake flour in the sauce because it dissolves quickly and can produce fewer lumps than all-purpose flour. Again, the low protein and gluten content tend to help make sauce recipes better, though many people do well with all-purpose flour as well.