Like your angel food cake tall and fluffy? Put down that unbleached cake flour.
want to brag. I make the best angel food cake in the world. It puffs up like a cloud in the oven, towering up out of the pan, and every slice is so fluffy, it makes whipped cream look dense. The recipe's coming later this week, but first, a spotlight on the secret ingredient—cake flour.
Milled from soft wheat, it's even more delicate than pastry flour, with a protein content of ideally no more than 8%. Though that's only two to five points lower than all-purpose, it's a critical difference when it comes to cake batter, which contains significantly more water than cookie dough, a state that facilitates gluten formation. For over a century, American cake flour has also been bleached, but in recent years, several manufacturers have introduced unbleached alternatives . I'll forever and always champion any company that widens the market for high-quality flour, and any baker who prefers homemade. I unconditionally support everyone's right to decide what foods belong in their pantry. That doesn't mean I'm willing to throw bleached cake flour under the bus simply because it's a chemically processed food. From sucrose to sodium chloride, baking depends on chemicals at every turn. I mean, what's a recipe if not a formula written in a language anyone can understand? No one gets excited about C12H22O11,Δ = 2H20 C24H36O18, but we can all agree that sugar + heat = caramel, and that's something grand...particularly with a generous dose of NaCl. I mean, sodium chloride, er, uh, salt.When it comes to understanding the chemistry of baking, it's crucial we not shy away from, well, chemistry! There's no reason to reject an ingredient simply because its name can be expressed in scientific terms. I'll readily admit thatdoesn't sound delicious, but it's a remarkable and widely misunderstood process that deserves more than a summary judgment.Lovejoy's Law and hyperbole—who wants to drink bleach, yuck! Such rhetorical devices willfully ignore the purpose of chemical treatments, and grossly exaggerate the scope of chlorine's use. For starters, manufacturers aren't pouring buckets of chlorine into cake flour—they're treating it through low-level exposure to chlorine gas. We're talking about concentrations ranging from 0.008% to 0.3% relative to the weight of the flour. But in no way, shape, or form does that much chlorine wind up in your food., so that when the gas mingles with cake flour, both are transformed. The flour undergoes a series of chemical interactions that disrupt glycosidic bonds, depolymerize starches, and oxidize lipids, amino acids, and carotene. That's a lot of scientific jargon, but what it means is that the flour isn't simply whitened; it's conditioned in a way that impacts absorbency, flavor, and pH. Meanwhile, the chlorine is changed, too. Coming into contact with the flour's own water content triggers hydrolyzation, a reaction that leaves behind chlorite ,There's some real cognitive dissonance going on when we shy away from bleached cake flour over "scary" chemicals like chloride, then pay extra for chloride in bottled water simply because brands are smart enough to bill it as a mineral or electrolyte instead. It's just one small example of why we should evaluate ingredients for what they are, not how they're framed. Although, come to think of it, American millers would probably have an easier go of it with a rebranding effort—Smart Flour: Electrolyte-Enhanced for Improved Performance in Cake! Compared to the dubious claims of certain bottled drinks, at least that would be true. Chlorinated cake flour improves the volume, structure, crumb, and dome symmetry of high-sugar cake formulas in scientifically measurable ways, as demonstrated in
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