If you find yourself wondering what the difference is between, say, all-purpose flour and pastry flour, an article from TLC titled Baking Flour Facts might be helpful. The short answer is: protien/gluten levels vary and affect the dough’s elasticity. But don’t let all this fancy talk scare you. Most recipes will do just fine with good ol’ all-purpose flour.
Things get trickier when you are starting to incorporate more whole grains into your diet. Here are the flours I stock (starting with the flour I use most):
- white whole wheat
- white all-purpose
- whole wheat pastry
White whole wheat flour sounds like cheating, but it’s not. It’s really 100% whole wheat flour. It’s just made from a different kind of wheat that is lighter in color and milder in taste. I use it in almost all of my baking and whenever whole wheat flour is called for. When first trying it with a recipe calling for regular all-purpose flour, I generally replace 50% of the flour with white whole wheat. Usually the change is hardly noticeable.
Whole wheat pastry flour is slightly lower in protien than all-purpose flour and therefore supposedly produces a more tender crumb in baked goods such as muffins and cookies. I stock it because it often appears in hippy cruchy recipes for baked goods.
