Adventures in cooking: Now I get it...

[alpharaposa]

I'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.

Comments

[collinsmom.livejournal.com]

Gluten is what makes bread chewy. You don't want to use it for pie crusts. It makes the crust tough and chewy. You want pie crust to melt in your mouth. That is why I use all purpose flour that has been sitting a while when I make my pie crusts. Also the recipe for pie crusts I use is Never-fail pie crusts. I think I gave you the recipe. Let me know if you can't find it. I'll get you another copy when I have unpacked our recipe books.

[stryck.livejournal.com]

That's why you'd use starch to cut the flour for pie crusts.

Though I've been doing more reading, and for pastries to wrap around things, gluten isn't a bad thing because it makes the pastry hold together better. So maybe cutting it for pasty pastry wouldn't be a good idea, after all.