Questions for bakers

Cafe Society
1

I have several question but I can only remember three right now and I don’t want to make a thread for each one. Hopefully someone can answer these for me.

  1. I have a cookbook for cookies and desserts that is more geared toward the UK in it’s recipes. It lists the American measurements along with British but some of the ingredients seem more British, at least in name. Many of the recipes call for caster or superfine sugar. A section at the beginning of the book explains that caster is finer than granulated, but is not the same as powdered. It explained that since it was finer it was easier to cream with butter. There were some recipes that called for granulated but most used caster (superfine).

I was able to find a finer granulated sugar at the store but it was way more expensive than granulated. My question is since most conventional cookie recipes do use granulated could I just substitute granulated for superfine and would I need to alter the amounts? Is there really much difference in baking with them?
2) Can I substitute whole wheat pastry flour for whole wheat flour? I bought some pastry flour and then promptly forgot where I found the recipes that called for it. I have since found some other recipes that just call for whole wheat flour and would prefer not to buy yet another type of flour if I can avoid it.

What is the difference between regular and pastry flour?
3) In another recipe I had substituted dark brown sugar with light brown and I liked the result very much. I don’t even want to try to make it with the dark brown but I am curious about what the difference might be if I did use the dark brown. Would it be denser or chewier? These were pretty light and chewy and the flavor of the liquer came through quite well, I think the dark brown sugar might over power that. Or would there not really be much difference?

2

I believe pastry flour has less protein, thus forming less gluten when mixed, promoting a more tender pastry than normal flour. I’d say it is OK for most any purpose other than where the flour needs to provide structural support, such as in bread. If you have to knead the dough as part of the recipe, forget using pastry flour.

It still may give you a different texture, though, I wouldn’t guarantee that any given recipe will come through unaffected by the substitution.

3

You should be able to make your own superfine sugar by pulsing some regular granulated sugar in a food processor (a clean coffee grinder should work too). Just don’t pulse too much, you don’t want to make powdered sugar.

4

Cheesesteak is right. Whole wheat pastry flour has less gluten. This makes it more tender in a cookie or pie, or even muffin. But it won’t do well in anything that is kneaded or uses yeast, like bread, cinnamon rolls, etc.

5

Accually, the difference between superfine sugar and powdered sugar, is that powdered has cornstarch in it. (read the package)
I’ve used the food processor to make sugar finer, and you really can’t get it too fine that way.
Maybe a blender would over do it, though.

6

I thought about trying that but I wasn’t sure if it would work. I was a little worried about making powdered sugar instead. I have a much cheaper version of the “Magic Bullet” food processor. One of the things they do in the infomercial for the Magic Bullet is process sugar into powdered sugar.
The whole wheat pastry flour substitutions would be for dog cookies and muffins, no breads.

Thanks to all for the answers!

7

Dark brown and light brown sugar should give you the same consistency. The difference is the strength of the flavor. Dark brown sugar has a stronger, more “molasses-y” taste. Light brown is more “caramel-y” and doesn’t stand out as much. Exchanging one for another shouldn’t affect the recipe; it’s just a matter of personal preference.

8

Regular sugar and superfine sugar (AKA baker’s sugar) measure the same. That is, a cup of one will have the same mass as a cup of the other. The same is not true for powdered sugar (and not just because powdered sugar has cornstarch in it). You can get the same results using regular sugar as when using superfine, but it takes longer to dissolve because of the different in crystal size.

I would expect that cookies made with pastry flour would be more brittle and crumbly than cookies made with all-purpose flour. That is, the texture would be more like pastry. Cakes and other leavened desserts would rise higher and have a lighter texture when made with pastry flour, but also might collapse if the recipe were designed for all-purpose flour. There is a type of white flour called “cake flour” that’s even lower in protein than pastry flour. I’ve seen recipes that are designed for cake flour that recommend using a smaller amount of all-purpose flour if cake flour isn’t available.

9

The difference will be in the amount of time it will take you to cream the butter and sugar together, castor sugar, being finer, will incorporate more easily, but there’s no reason why you can’t use granulated sugar, you’ll just have to be prepared to cream the butter and sugar together for longer.

This is not going to work so well though for things like shortcrust pastry or such, where you mix the flour, butter and sugar together. The quality of the pastry will depend on the least possible amount of mixing time so that you don’t over-develop the gluten in the flour, so if you’re making pate sucree or something like that I’d suggest you spring for the superfine sugar.

picunurse is correct in saying that some powdered sugar has cornstarch in it, but that’s to stop the superfine sugar clumping. You can usually buy it sans the added flour, which I prefer, but in humid weather or if the sugar is older, you’ll probably need to sift it before you use it.

As has already been mentioned, pastry flour has a lower protein content and thus gives softer result in pastry. You can make bread and other yeasted/kneaded goods from soft flours, but you need to be prepared to give them a bit more rising time and expect a slightly less elevated result.

If you’re using a British cookbook you’ll possibly find that the recipes work pretty well, since British flour has historically been softer than the high protein flours made from American/Australian/Canadian wheat. Thank you to Elizabeth David for that little factoid.

Some baked goods, such as puff pastry (and croissants) are probably better made with strong flours, since they depend on gluten development for success.

I use dark brown and light brown sugar pretty much interchangeably. I believe the difference is the amount of molasses in the sugar. I don’t know that there’s a huge difference in flavour, but dark brown sugar has a slightly higher moisture content, so you might have to fiddle with the liquid content a bit. Or not. I’m not sure the difference is likely to be that significant.

10

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