The Magic Behind: Types of White Flour

Art done on commission by Kelly Wang

Cakes, brownies, cookies, breads, and more often rely upon flour to keep their structure. However, these recipes often call for flours of different varieties. Cake flour for cakes and brownies, all-purpose flour for cookies, and bread flour for bread. The naming of these flours make it seem simple enough, but assumptions on what flour to use and when to use them can lead to disaster. Some cake recipes call for all-purpose flour just as some bread recipes do. Conversely, some cookie recipes can benefit from the inclusion of bread flour. To add even more chaos to the mix, not all all-purpose flours are the same. Some all-purpose flour is what I call high-protein all-purpose or just high-protein flour, but this is not standard language. So to benefit interested bakers and spread some awareness, I will cover each of these 4 white flour types and the magic behind them.

All-Purpose Flour

The workhorse of kitchens world-wide. All-purpose white flour can be used to make cakes, breads, cookies, and more. This wasn’t an arbitrary designation. It is closely tied to its protein content and composition. These are the two core traits that differentiate most white flours. All-purpose is made of milled wheat, specifically a combination of both “hard” and “soft” wheats. In this context, hard and soft,  refer to the protein content of the wheats used. The specific combination of wheats used for all-purpose flour results in a wheat with a “medium” level of protein, in the range of 10% to 11% typically. As an example, Gold Medal unbleached All-Purpose has a protein content of 10.5%.You can expect most generic brands to have a similar content.

What does this mean when baking? The higher the protein content in flour, the higher the gluten development during the baking process. More gluten creates stronger doughs with both elasticity and extensibility. Using my brown butter blondies as an example, all-purpose flour allows the crumb structure to be slightly finer and softer, with a slight chew. Swapping all-purpose flour would give the blondie greater chew and increase density slightly as it holds more water.

Cake Flour

If you ever want to improve your cake game, start baking with cake flour. Cake flour sits on the low end of protein content at miniscule 7% to 10% depending on the brand. I myself use King Arthur which sits at the high end with 10% protein. As mentioned earlier, cake flour creates more even and finer crumbs in your baked goods. If you find that you don’t have cake flour, worry not as all-purpose will still work in most recipes. It is also possible to make cake flour substitutes at home. King Arthur gives their own recommendation.

“How to make cake flour: Whisk together 3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons (105g) all-purpose flour and 2 tablespoons (14g) cornstarch. Use in place of cake flour in a recipe, substituting by equal weight or volume.” — See the Source Article

When working with lower-protein flours like cake flour, it's important to note a few things. First, your batter may appear wetter than if you used all-purpose flour. This is because there is less protein for the water to bind to during the mixing process. This can make some doughs and batters harder or easier to work with depending on your perspective and recipe. This then also impacts the final product, which brings me to my second note. Not all recipes will develop enough gluten with cake flour. Since the protein contents are lower, the strength of the dough or batter is also lower. Some cakes may collapse on themself and some cookies may spread excessively in the oven. Therefore, you should be cautious when substituting cake flour into recipes that call for all-purpose flour.

Bread Flour

Despite the name bread flour, this flour is not limited to just bread, nor do all breads use it. Bread flour is categorized by its higher protein content, typically sitting in the 12% to 14% range of protein content. With such a high protein content, this flour will form strong, elastic, and stretchable dough when combined with water. You will see and experience this especially when kneading dough for breads like sourdough. This strong glutenous dough is also what gives bread that signature bubbly crumb. The stretchy nature that comes from this high protein flour means that as the dough leavens from fermentation, it traps gas bubbles in the dough creating pockets.

However, using this flour for only bread is a bit of a waste. Bread flour can be used in recipes for cookies, blondies, and brownies to create dense, chewy treats. In most recipes that call for all-purpose flour, the quantity of baking powder or soda involved is often not enough to create a comparable rise. The strong gluten network prevents the same level of rise, hence the dense, chewy texture. King Arthur offers great comparison photos on all-purpose versus bread flour. You can see those photos by clicking here.

High-Protein All-Purpose Flour

Last but not least in this article is my favorite. The high-protein all-purpose flour, typically made by King Arthur. This flour sits outside of the typically generic or name brand protein range for all-purpose flour. King Arthur specifically sits at 11.7%. This group is technically arbitrary and you won’t find much documentation compared to the more standard three flours above. That being said, my own personal experience with this category of flour has given me many challenges and insights to share. To treat 11.7% flour the same as one would treat 10.5% all-purpose would be a mistake for a number of recipes.

When developing cookie recipes, I see major variations in textures, bake times, and dough strength when using 11.7% versus 10.5%. When baking with flours in an 11%-12% protein content range, cookie dough will hold more water, spread less, and take longer to bake. A cookie that was chewy and moist with high-protein all-purpose could be dry and overbaked with normal all-purpose flour. When shopping for all-purpose flour at the store, it is important to look for indicators as to the protein content. Some brands may not list their protein content online, while others may have them on the bag itself.