Cutting KA flour

[Franci]

I generally buy King Arthur's flour. Before Christmas I also bought their Unbleached Pastry Flour (7.50 $ for 3 lbs) and their Perfect Pastry Blend (8.50 $ for 3 lbs) which is a middle between the two in terms of strength. I find these pastry flours are pretty expensive, considering that their 10 lbs sack of AP is 8.95 $.

I don't bake a lot of American recipes, more French or Italian, so for baking cakes or cookies I'm cutting KA's all purpose flour with 10% potato starch.

And I'm thinking of doing the same for chinese steamed bread or flat breads in general. Do you cut your flour, when? what do you like to sub?

For some pasta/bread I also buy the caputo blue (stronger) or red (weaker).

What are your preferences depending from what you are making?

[annabelle]

Try subbing in cake flour, Franci. It is low in gluten and a very soft flour milled especially for cake baking. Swan's Down is a good brand and is readily available. If you bake a great deal of bread, you could buy gluten flour at the health food store (or maybe Whole Foods?) if you wish to have a stronger flour for table breads, bagels and soft pretzels.

For cookies and brownies, I use AP flour sifted twice and measured by weight. American recipes are measured in ounces if by weight and in cups if by measure. This is confusing if you are used to cooking with metric weights. I have a scale that has a tare feature so I can measure the flour into a bowl that is sitting on the scale. I can also change the weight measure from ounces to grams.

Julia Child suggests a tablespoon or two of lard in butter based pastry crust to correct AP flour's strength to something closer to French flour for pies and tarts.

[lebowits]

Try subbing in cake flour, Franci. It is low in gluten and a very soft flour milled especially for cake baking. Swan's Down is a good brand and is readily available. If you bake a great deal of bread, you could buy gluten flour at the health food store (or maybe Whole Foods?) if you wish to have a stronger flour for table breads, bagels and soft pretzels.

For cookies and brownies, I use AP flour sifted twice and measured by weight. American recipes are measured in ounces if by weight and in cups if by measure. This is confusing if you are used to cooking with metric weights. I have a scale that has a tare feature so I can measure the flour into a bowl that is sitting on the scale. I can also change the weight measure from ounces to grams.

Julia Child suggests a tablespoon or two of lard in butter based pastry crust to correct AP flour's strength to something closer to French flour for pies and tarts.

For breads, I've found that a mix of AP and KA "bread flour" (higher gluten content) works well for some types of breads. Others need the higher gluten content of the bread flour. Hopefully, your formula will give you a clue as to which flour it prefers, or at least a % protein content.

[Franci]

Thank you, I think I will keep playing with just one recipe to get what I want.

[DianaM]

I am coming late to this thread, but I happened on it while searching for information on the protein content of different flours. I have many questions about the protein percentages in different flours, but for this thread I'll stick with my KA question. The KA all-purpose unbleached is (potentially) very similar to the AP I use (a Canadian brand), and I need to cut mine as well, but I need to clarify something.

I am looking at the KA unbleached AP. They say it has 11.7% protein. However, in the nutritional info, it says 4g protein per 30g flour. Unless my math skills are really bad, that is more like 13.3%. Or am I missing something?

If protein is 11.7% then it's very different than my AP. If it is 13.3%, then it is the same.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Call KA and ask.