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Adventures in cooking: Now I get it...
Jul. 17th, 2006 09:17 amI'm up to the chapter on breads and batters in On Food and Cooking, and the previous chapter was all about grains like wheat, rye, and corn. It's been interesting stuff.
Then, yesterday, I flipped through some recipes in one of my souvenir cookbooks and looked at the Devonshire Splits again. If you'll recall, it calls for 'strong white flour', and I was kind of puzzled about that when I first made it. Now that I've read all the stuff in my science-y book, I know what it means. It means bread flour. The 'strong' refers to the extra gluten protein found in bread flour, which contributes to bread's strong, spongy texture. The gluten allows the bread to rise farther and hold its shape better as the air bubbles pop and stretch inside when it bakes.
So, I've bought some bread flour and plan to use it to make splits soon.
Interestingly, you can convert all-purpose flour to bread or pastry flour. You mix 1:1 (by weight) pure starch (cornstarch, for instance) and flour to make it into pastry flour, or you add straight gluten (kind of hard to get if you're not a bakery, but possible) to make it into bread flour. So, if you really wanna cheat on that pie crust, you might want to try substituting in some starch for a portion of the flour.
Hmm. I bet if I do that for the pastry for my pasties, it'll roll out flatter. Gluten makes bread more elastic, which is a real pain when you're trying to make it flat.
Then, yesterday, I flipped through some recipes in one of my souvenir cookbooks and looked at the Devonshire Splits again. If you'll recall, it calls for 'strong white flour', and I was kind of puzzled about that when I first made it. Now that I've read all the stuff in my science-y book, I know what it means. It means bread flour. The 'strong' refers to the extra gluten protein found in bread flour, which contributes to bread's strong, spongy texture. The gluten allows the bread to rise farther and hold its shape better as the air bubbles pop and stretch inside when it bakes.
So, I've bought some bread flour and plan to use it to make splits soon.
Interestingly, you can convert all-purpose flour to bread or pastry flour. You mix 1:1 (by weight) pure starch (cornstarch, for instance) and flour to make it into pastry flour, or you add straight gluten (kind of hard to get if you're not a bakery, but possible) to make it into bread flour. So, if you really wanna cheat on that pie crust, you might want to try substituting in some starch for a portion of the flour.
Hmm. I bet if I do that for the pastry for my pasties, it'll roll out flatter. Gluten makes bread more elastic, which is a real pain when you're trying to make it flat.
