Organic Cake Flour

Organic cake flour is unbleached and presents a challenge to organic bakers wishing for a traditional cake texture.

Non-organic cake flours are bleached in order to create the higher acid level necessary to achieve the texture and consistency found in cakes. Since organic flours are unbleached, this lack of bleaching will mean a denser and heavier cake than a bleached flour one.

You might not be aware that cake flour is different from other flours such as all purpose or self rising. A cake flour has a higher starch to gluten ratio which is the reason the cake texture is fine and crumbly.

There are many kinds of flours created for specific kinds of baking. While it isn’t required that you use specific flours to bake pastries, pastas, breads, muffins, cakes, and other foodstuffs, you’ll find specific flours help your food taste better. It all starts with the wheat.

There are two types of wheat – Hard and soft. Hard wheat is high in protein while soft wheat is higher in starch content. Each affects the way sugar and other ingredients are assimilated and bound to each other when baked. There are many kinds of wheat varieties. Organic white spelt, the ancient wheat, is often used for cake flour.

Most flours are a blend of what’s known as hard and soft wheats. Hard wheat is great for breads while soft wheat is used for cake flour, pastry flour and even self rising flour.

Soft Wheat:

• Soft Red Winter Wheat — High starch, low protein wheat.
• Soft White Wheat— extremely low protein. Excellent choice for pastry, cake and cookie flours.

Hard Wheat:

• Durum – Translucent light colored. Used for pasta – semolina flour.
• Hard Red Spring – Brown. High protein. Used for breads.
• Hard Red Winter – Brown. High protein. Used for breads and mixed with other flour for pie crust pastry.
• Hard White – Light opaque color. Medium protein. Used for breads and also beer brewing.

Cake flour is made from a soft wheat because once baked, it creates a fine crumbly texture, which is very desirable in cakes. This happens because soft wheat flour has a naturally higher starch, lower protein content than other wheat flours. Because of the high starch content, cake flour accepts a higher sugar to flour ratio. This high starch content means there’s less likelihood that once the cake rises; it’ll fall. This is a common problem when using a non-cake flour like an all purpose one.

Another valuable quality of cake flour is its ability to maintain a fine texture when baking higher volume foods like breads. That’s why many recipes for quick breads call for you to use cake flour. Cake flour is also an excellent choice for baking muffins and even some cookies because it’ll give added taste and a finer texture.

When you think of flour, chances are you think of wheat flour. There are all kinds of flour that are made from more than wheat. For example, nuts and seeds can be milled into flours. Other grains and vegetables can also be milled into flours and can be used as wheat substitutes for cake and other baking.

Some of these include:

• Barley
• Potato
• Rice
• Buckwheat
• Soy
• Rye
• Corn
• Chickpea

Many times you can find gluten-free flour made from garbanzo flour, tapioca flour and fava flour. Sometimes potato starch is added to help the flour have a cake-like texture.

It’s a proven fact that when you bake with unbleached flour you’ll get a heavier cake than if you’d made if from bleached flour. To remedy this inconsistency in organic unbleached flour, you’ll need to take a few extra steps to ensure your cake doesn’t turn out too dense and heavy. Many bakers prefer using white spelt (ancient wheat) flour.

You can make organic unbleached flour lighter in texture and more suitable for baking cakes by using a simple technique. Just add one tablespoon of cornstarch to each measured cup of flour your recipe calls for. Make sure that the cornstarch is organic, however, because conventional cornstarch generally contains GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms).

You’ll want to first place the organic cornstarch into the measuring cup before adding the flour. This will displace a little of the overall flour content by replacing it with the much needed starch content required to bind the sugar better to the flour. Blend carefully with a fork and spoon into the batter.

This technique will give your cake the kind of texture typically found in a cake made with bleached flour. What is often considered a draw back to organic flour is easily remedied with this simple addition of starch.

Some organic flours have compensated the flour with additional starch. Read the labels carefully so you don’t end up adding starch when you don’t need it.

Organic Flour For Cake Baking:

• Giusto’s Pastry and Cake Flour
• Pastry Flour
• Gluten Free All PurposeFlour
• Organic Quinoa Flour
• Spelt Flour
• Organic All Purpose
• Organic Cake Mixes
• Diamond Organic Flours

When you use an organic unbleached flour in a cake batter, you must be careful not to over-mix the batter. Over-mixing will tend to activate the flour gluten and create an undesirable bread-like texture in your cake.

You may need to take a few additional steps to make organic cake flour a reality for your baking needs, but the healthy result and great taste will be worth your effort..

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