Here's a fun fact I learned while trying to figure out what's with all the pastry flour called for in vegan baked goods: there are different types of flour with different characteristics based on exactly what's in them!
A list of basic types of flour used in baking:
All-purpose flour, bread flour, cake flour, pastry flour
And here's how they vary, mostly in terms of gluten protein content:
Flour type: ([protein composition range]; characteristics)*
All-purpose: ([0.09, 0.12]; rises well, mixable, moderately elastic)
Bread: ([0.12, 0.13]; well-risen, chewy, elastic)
Pastry: ([0.08, 0.09]; some body, moderately tender)
Cake: ([0.05, 0.08]; inelastic, very tender)
A few uncommon flours:
Buckwheat (0.09; heavy, flavorful)
Whole wheat (0.14; heavy, dense, high in trace minterals)
Rye: (0.09; inelastic, low gluten)
Also exciting: some eggless cake recipes and an NPR feature on valentine's vegan treats !
Ta-da! And that's my daily ration of random factoids. Now, time to get to the store to find some pastry flour.. if they don't have that, I guess I can substitute with a weighted mixture of cake flour and all-purpose.. but now, I know why!
*This is the typical engineering way of expressing things, which implies that flour type is a function of both protein composition and characteristics. In actuality, it would be more correct to say that characteristics are a function of flour type and protein composition, but what variables am I going to use for characteristics? Let's not get too mathematical, here.
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