Cooking For Engineers

[LeRoy]

Cake books say you can convert all.purpose flour into cake flour by using 7/8 cup a-p.f. to 1 cup c.f . I've tried it several times, and with poor results. Does this mean that there is no real substitute for cake flour? I'm saying this because I live in an area where cake flour is available but unreliable.

[Dilbert]

generally those "you can do X to substitute for Y" can save a dish when you discover you're out of something, but it is a substitute...

cake flour is 'softer' - meaning less gluten/protein - than AP. you may find cakes made with AP to be slightly 'tougher'

I'm not sure I understand how cake flour is 'unreliable' - what are you experiencing?

for cakes and pastries, sifting is almost always recommended - sometimes even a double sift. this aerates the flour and the batter does come out lighter / fluffier.

[Blue Pilgrim]

You can lower the gluten content by adding starch; generally corn starch is used. You can also get wheat starch -- I suppose you might buy it somewhere (but then you could buy cake flour somewhere too, if only on the web), but you can also get it by making some homemade seitan by washing flour for the gluten, and keeping the starch which settles to the bottom of the container you wash it in. I doubt it would be quite the same as cake flour -- I think that's made from a different variety of wheat -- a soft, low gluten wheat. Still, you might get something usable if you experiment a bit.

Probably just buying some cake flour off the internet is the best bet if you can't find it locally. Worst case you should be able to get some from a local bakery, who should know what quality they have. That's also a good place to get yeast.

[islander]

Of course you can make fluffy cakes. Flour all around the world is different I forgot to check where you are from. I have made hundreds of light fluffy cakes with all purpose flour. Cant you also just add a 1/2 tsp extra of baking powder to the recipe when it calls for cake but your using all purpose. Something like that.