Holiday Baking – Does Your Choice of Flour Really Matter?

In the culinary arts, there are “formulas” or “ratios” for preparing baked goods that are the basis for any category of product.

To create different varieties of cookies, for example, the basic formula of ingredients is tweaked.

This series on holiday baking will focus on some of those ingredients and how they affect your sensory perception of the finished baked good product, starting with cookies.

Today’s blog post will look at one key ingredient: flour. With so many flour options on the market, you may wonder if your choice of flour really might matter when it comes to baked goods in general and cookies in particular? Read on to find out the answer!

 Holiday Baking – Cookies and Their Ingredients Part 2 Flour

Professional bakers measure flour and other ingredients by weight, not by volume. Most recipes developed in the US for consumers will include volume measurements, and some may contain both weight and volume measurements. While the rest of the world uses the metric measuring system, the US has never fully embraced it.

Flour:

•A cup of typical all-purpose flour, whether bleached or unbleached, will weigh approximately 4.5 oz or approximately 128 grams.

•Before measuring ANY flour, always stir the flour to aerate it and spoon it into a dry measuring cup and level it with a flat, straight edge such as the back of some knives. A good “stirring” tool is actually a wire whisk.

•It is best to measure flour by spooning it into a measuring cup and leveling, rather than by dipping/scooping the measuring cup and then leveling/sweeping. Differences of 2 Tbsp. per cup of flour have been noted by using one method vs. the other (dipping method will have more packed flour than the spooning method will). Other reports mention that differences as great as a full ounce per cup might occur, depending upon which method of flour measuring is used. (A cup of sifted cake flour = ~ 3.75 oz, while a cup of unsifted cake flour would = ~ 4.5 oz; a cup of sifted bread flour = ~ 4 oz while a cup of unsifted bread flour = ~ 4.75 oz.)

•In an increasing order from least to most, cake flour has the lowest protein content, then typically Southern soft bleached wheat flours have lower protein content than wheat flours grown from other wheat sources around the country, then unbleached flour, then bread flour has the most protein content, especially from hard wheat varieties.

Southern biscuits used to be so tender in part because of the lower protein content of the flour there in centuries gone by.

•If you want a more tender cookie that could fall apart easily, tend towards the use of some cake flour in the recipe; or if you want a cookie that is firmer, tend towards the use of some bread flour in the recipe. Cookies made from unbleached flour will often stay together better than cookies made from bleached flour.

•The more flour in the recipe by proportional weight, the less spread there will be when the cookie is baked. An example of that would be a classic butter cookie such as the original shortbread cookie based on the classic ratio of 1 part sugar:2 parts fat:3 parts flour.

•”Flour” has changed a LOT over the years.

In the 1800’s, flour was a very local commodity that varied from one part of a state to another, let alone from state to state. It was dependent upon the wheat or other grain variety/varieties grown, the mill that broke the grain down to flour (which might have several farmers contributing grain and mixing it all together and then milling it all together), and then if more than one source of flour was mixed together with wheat or buckwheat flour from other mills in say a cooperative type arrangement prior to being bagged & sold towards the end of that century.

Whole grain flours were much more common until the next century came along.

As we got into the 1900’s, there was more shipping of product from one place to another within states and within the country, so the recipe a revered ancestor swore by, based on the flour where he or she lived, might not work out for a young relative who had moved to live in a city area with access to different flour sources.

Bleaching of flour became more common and whole grain flours became harder to find as bleached (think chlorinated) white, all-purpose flour was mass marketed around the country as the century progressed.

•Recipes based on the flour of the times in a given locale in another century cannot be expected to ring true with flour sources available today.

•So although you may have some very old revered cookbooks or recipes for baked goods, realize that some baked goods recipes just might not work the way they did for those who came before us as the flours of today are NOT the same as those of old.

•Sometimes you will have to use new recipe(s) or else adapt old ones. Adaptations might include increasing the protein contribution of today’s flour to a recipe so adding 2-4 tbsp of all-purpose or possibly even bread flour (even higher in protein) might be necessary to make an older recipe work properly with today’s bleached all-purpose flour options.

If you don’t adjust some older recipes from centuries past, don’t be surprised if the cookies don’t turn out the way you or an elder family member claims the cookies did long ago with very different flour.

•Flour still varies depending upon the exact crop variety source and where it was grown and processed, but there is a bit more uniformity between the major brands today for all-purpose flour compared to the flours of yesteryear vs. those of today.

Still, bakers have their favorite sources of flour, so don’t hesitate to explore your options when it comes to flour sources to find what works best for the recipes you like to make.  (I personally prefer unbleached flour and also get other flours, including whole wheat flour, etc., from a mill in the NorthEast that is employee owned).

•Wheat Flour contains two main proteins: glutenin type of glutelin, and gliadin. Together, those proteins create gluten. Gluten development in anything is what provides more structure to it.

The more gluten content, the more likely a baked good is to hold together; the less gluten, the more likely a baked good is to fall apart easily.

Gluten development involves the creation of cross-striations or bonds of any glutelin (such as glutenin) connected to gliadin.

Stirring, kneading, rolling, etc. of dough all increase the number of these cross-striated bonds that are formed, thus giving greater structural integrity to the product (think of pizza dough).  When it comes to cookies, you may not want to overly increase that structural integrity, so be careful about over-rolling and re-rolling any cookie doughs–less is best when it comes to rolling cookie dough.

Proteins, like sugars, are hydrophyllic, which simply means they are attracted to water.  The higher the moisture content up to a certain point, the happier the proteins will be. As the proteins absorb that moisture, it becomes easier to develop the gluten structural bonds.

Of course, sugar will compete with flour proteins for water, so at times we have to make sure we hydrate the flour before it comes in contact with any sugar source.

More about that another day, but suffice it to say that it is much harder to have gluten-free products hold together because there simply is not gluten there to make a valuable contribution to structural integrity.

Some individuals cannot tolerate gluten because of either having celiac disease or a gluten sensitivity. Wheat flour of any type, which contains the glutenin form of glutelin, as well as containing gliadin, is not the only source of these glutelin building proteins these individuals must watch out for in their consumption of food items.

The building blocks of gluten are also primarily found in barley, rye, graham, spelt (aka dinkle), kamut and sometimes oats are “contaminated” as well.

Gluten-free “flours” from other sources (potato, sorghum, rice, corn, millet, chia seeds, chickpea, soy, etc.) will obviously have different characteristics and act differently in baked goods, which is why there are specific gluten-free recipe books which will focus heavily on alternative flour and other ingredient option use in the gluten-free baking of cookies, etc.

For my holiday gift list suggestions, I will mention some of those books, which go into detail about purchasing all sorts of gluten-free flour options and gums and other ingredients to help make gluten-free baking possible.

In the end, for any type of holiday baking, including cookie baking, your choice of flour and how you measure it really does matter!