CWS4322
Chef Extraordinaire
Not an expert on flours, CharlieD, but from what I've gathered in reading various chapters of the book I've mentioned, pastry flour is a lower in gluten flour than bread flour and higher in gluten than cake flour and is "used for cookies, pie pastry, and some sweet yeast doughs, and for biscuits and muffins."pardon my ignorance, but if you use pastry flour, aren't you going to end up with pastry dough?
Like most people, I grew up using AP flour, whole wheat flour, graham flour, or rye flour (and wild rice flour, but that is probably not what most folks grew up using). I don't know that I've ever used pastry flour...and my pie crusts turn out pretty flaky and tender, even before I started adding vinegar and vodka. I'm intrigued by using the baker's percentage with my grandma's recipe and then trying it using pastry flour and then trying it using whole wheat flour (since I do make ww flour crusts for various savory tarts). Baking is all about chemistry and I'm now trying to understand why and how the various ingredients work/don't work together. This from a person who likes to cook without recipes...
This book also recommends that the salt be added to the water, not mixed in with the flour as most of us were probably taught to do.
As you might have guessed, I've had a pretty quiet week and have been reading different chapters of this book off and on.
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