Ever Wonder What All Those Different Flours Are For?

Here’s a list of the different kinds of flour, and what the baking gurus say they’re best suited for:

All-purpose flour: As one baker put it, this flour is OK for everything but great for nothing. A blend of hard and soft wheat, it may be bleached or unbleached. Bleached is best for pie crusts, cookies, quick breads, pancakes and waffles. Baking teacher Shirley Corriher recommends unbleached for yeast breads, Danish pastry, puff pastry, strudel, Yorkshire pudding, eclairs, cream puffs and popovers.

Cake flour: The Wheat Foods Council calls this a “fine-textured, silky flour milled from soft wheats with a low protein content.” Since it has a greater percentage of starch and less protein, it’s best for keeping delicate cakes tender.

General Mills says you can use cake flour instead of all-purpose flour in recipes by increasing the cake flour by 2 tablespoons per cup, but that in some recipes the substitution may cause sinkage or collapse. Similarly, you can use all-purpose flour instead of cake flour by decreasing the all-purpose flour by 2 tablespoons, but General Mills does not recommend this substitution for delicate cakes such as angel food or sponge.

Self-rising flour: Sometimes referred to as phosphated flour, this is a low-protein flour with salt and leavening already added. It’s most often recommended for biscuits and some quick breads but never for yeast breads. According to the Wheat Foods Council, one cup of self-rising flour contains 1-1/2 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. It can be used instead of all-purpose by reducing the salt and baking powder according to these proportions.

Instantized flour: Gold Medal’s version is called Wondra Quick-Mixing Flour; Pillsbury’s is Shake & Blend. They’re granular in texture and, because they disperse instantly in cold liquids, are best for preparing smooth gravies and sauces.

Bread flour: This is white flour made from hard, high-protein wheats. It has more gluten strength and protein content than all-purpose flour and absorbs more water. It is unbleached and sometimes conditioned with ascorbic acid.

Pastry flour: Milled from soft wheat, this falls somewhere between all-purpose and cake flour in terms of protein content and baking properties.

Durum flour: Grown in the U.S. almost exclusively in North Dakota, durum is a hard spring wheat used to make noodles. It’s finely ground semolina.

Semolina: Used to make couscous and pasta, this is the coarsely ground endosperm of durum.