Flour.

We all use it, but how often do we discuss it? And why baking recipes might not work on the wrong side of the Atlantic.

Welcome to ingredient, where once a month I take a deep dive into some of my favourite seasonal and store cupboard ingredients. This month I’m focusing on flour, something we all keep stocked in the pantry, but I’m willing to bet we also don’t give much thought to.

For paid subscribers click here for my recipes for my Toadless Hole with Onion Gravy, Bacon Stuffed Waffles, and my Scotch Rolls.

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We all have flour in our kitchens. We use it everyday without thinking about it, and I even used to use it to polish my kitchen sink back when I was in rentals with stainless steel rather than white ceramic. Whilst I do still buy cheap bags of supermarket plain and self raising flour for everyday, I even order great, 16kg sacks of Canadian White for bread making from Matthews Cotswold Flour, as well as many of their delicious blends.

But, it was not until I got sidetracked talking about the differences between flour in Britain and America with fellow Substacker Anne Byrn in an email thread as we were putting together our brilliantly fun ‘On translating ingredients to American (and back again)’ post, did I really stop to think about flour as an ingredient, rather than something like salt and good light olive oil for frying that I always take for granted I’ll have to hand.

I’m a cook, not a baker. If you’re one or the other, you know the difference. Whilst some people are both, and cooks bake and bakers cook, the former comes to me intuitively, not the latter. This matters because I don’t habitually become preoccupied with things like how a certain flour will impact the texture of a sponge cake, I just want something that will help an egg or breadcrumb coating stick, or make a roux, and most on my shelf will do. Obviously when I’m writing a recipe for something I want to make it the very best it can be (typically if I’m even considering writing a sweet recipe it is because it has been comissioned), but it is not what keeps me up at night.

Anne, on the other hand, is most definitely an expert baker, and as an American who has lived in different parts of the country, as well as in England where I’m writing to you from, she seemed like the perfect person whose brain to pick on the topic.

So, something a little different this month: rather than opting for a straight up essay, or for an essay followed by an interview as I did back in March for Matzo Meal, I’ve but together a bit about what I’ve learned about flour chatting to Anne. I hope you’ll learn a little too, though I think we only barely scratched the surface chatting casually about flour in cooking and baking.

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In the beginning I was not asking about regular flour, I was curious about cake flour:

Rachel: What exactly *is* cake flour, because I see it on the shelves in supermarkets here but ever single pastry chef I know uses 00 or just regular plain flour, so I always assumed it was a way to charge home bakers more?

Anne: Cake flour is flour that has a little corn starch added to soften it and make it more suitable for sponge cakes. 

Wait… what? This just left me with more questions. Should we British be adding cornflour (what Americans call corn flour is not a product we have ready access too, your corn starch is our cornflour) to our bakes as a better crumb hack in a similar vein to the old Woman’s Institute standby of mixing a tablespoon of boiling water into a Victoria Sponge batter just before baking to help add steam and therefore create a lighter sponge? Something to play around with, I suspect, because Googling of ingredient lists tells me the cornflour thing is not the case for British brands. I really think those are about getting more money from you, or are they instead about protein? We’ll talk about protein in a moment.

Rachel: That is interesting about cake flour - does it differ with brands? Have you worked out a ratio as people have to substitute self raising flour?

Anne: I only use Swans Down and King Arthur cake flour, and only randomly because a recipe calls for it. Angel Food Cake calls for it. But I am thinking it is the work around for sponge cakes and a much better flour than just AP (All Purpose) flour. It is light. And once you get the amount right - use a scale! - write it down.

Anne then also explained to me that for cakes, the amount of protein in the flour also makes a difference:

Anne: Protein in flour adds structure. The lower the protein and more starchy the flour, the better and softer it is for cakes. The more protein, the more structure and chew so thus higher protein flours are best for loaf bread and pizza crust. 

When I lived in England I had a tough time getting just flour to work in my cake recipes. It wasn’t soft enough. 

So that cake flour on the shelf is lower in protein and probably also a way to charge more, too. 

I then realised that whilst as a cook I can use plain flour and all purpose flour interchangeably writing cooking (not baking) recipes, there is a difference in the protein typically between British and American flour explains why, sometimes, American baking recipes might just not work for us Brits, if the protein in the flour really matters. I already knew different proteins make a difference to texture and liquid absorption (it is why I prefer Canadian White to Churchill bread flour, I think. I’d never thought about the science, I just know which one I prefer the behaviour of the dough I’ve made from each) but I’ve never paid it much attention. But, if you happen to own a copy of The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook (ad) and turn to page 210 you’ll find a recipe for Brownie Roll-out Cookies which, in my edition, is covered in Trader Joe’s Unsweetened Cocoa Powder. I know it is Trader Joe’s Unsweetened Cocoa Powder, not my trusty British Bournville that has worked it’s way into the crack between the pages because I’ve given up trying to bake these anymore: the magic of these brownie-flavoured cookies I used to make several times a week in my Los Angeles kitchen is utterly lost when you try to bake them in the UK. I exclusively baked with European-style butter when I lived in America, so now I think it is the difference in flour that has locked one of my favourite recipes away from me.

I asked Anne about this.

Anne: If the biscuit (we’re talking about biscuits in the British sense here) recipe was all butter, it needs to be very cold to roll. I use a 60/40 ratio of our lowest protein flour - White Lily, which I had shipped to me in England, and I am embarrassed to say - and supermarket AP unbleached flour. Big difference in how bleached and unbleached flour works in cake recipes. Bleaching which is now taboo, inhibits gluten formation, so bleached white Southern flour makes gorgeous sponge cakes.

We then moved on to talk about the other flours that the typical home cook may have on hand (I’m not going to get into different flours such as spelt right now, today we’re all about the white wheat stuff).

I found Anne’s explanation of ‘self rising flour’, for me a baking staple growing up on a steady diet of Mary Berry, but not something I see much in American recipes much easier to figure out:

Anne: Self raising flour or what we call self rising has leavening (baking powder) added to it. 

Something I’ve also learned recently which I think all Americans trying to bake British recipes need to remember is that there is actually a difference between self raising and self rising flour: salt. The American one has it, and ours does not.

So there you have it. A mini master class on baking with flour. And before we move onto this months recipes, a big thank you to Anne for agreeing to let me publish some of our email exchange. If you’re not already (where have you been?) you can subscribe to her frankly brilliant (I’m even a paid subscriber!) Substack here:

With flour being such a ubiquitous ingredient, I was a little overwhelmed trying to figure out where to go with this months recipes, so I just went for three things I love to eat!

Shall we start with my Toadless Hole with Onion Gravy? In a food internet that seems perpetually dominated by Americans, I’m British so eating flour for dinner in the earliest throws of winter usually means one thing: batter. And because I’m getting overexcited about all the rich, colourful and comforting root vegetables that are coming back in, I’ve used them in place of the more traditional sausages to make a ‘Toadless’ take on Toad in the Hole, served with a rich onion gravy. You can’t get heartier for a vegetarian dish on a cold night.

Next, something for brunch, especially helpful if you’re expecting house guests over the next couple of months. On Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, Los Angeles you’ll find The Tasting Kitchen, otherwise known as my favourite brunch spot in all the world. Sadly the menu has since moved on but in the early to mid 2010’s as well as a killer Petit Mary cocktail (a short Bloody Mary made with green tomato water and plenty of celery salt) they offered the best waffles I’ve ever had, with or without chicken and gravy. The thing that put them over the edge? That you could order them bacon or sausage stuffed, and ever since I’ve been dreaming of a bacon stuffed waffle.

So, naturally, I’ve made you bacon stuffed waffles.

Finally, I spent a lot of time this past month revisiting a recipe I’d previously shelved for Oven Fried Chicken with a crispy, floury coating… and honestly? I thought I’d nailed it and just needed to stop the coating on the bottom of the chicken pieces sticking to the baking rack, but then on further tests the recipe started going backwards again. So much so J politely requested I abandon the concept so he never has to eat a version of it ever again. So I turned to the reason I buy bulk bags of flour in the first place: bread. Whilst yes, I mostly just make sandwich loaves for everyday, I’m making slow cooked beef for dinner tonight so I thought it would be fun to knock together a batch of Scotch Rolls to stuff the beef into, because I’ve already published how I make flatbreads, and because don’t we all need a good soft roll recipe in our back pocket?