Ordinary plain flour is best for short crust pastry. Self-raising flour is used by some people, but I think it produces a more ‘cakey’ texture, being slightly aerated: the finished pastry is softer, less crisp than with plain flour. Air, however, is a vital ingredient, and all flour must be sifted. Sifting is done not only to disperse the lumps, but also to give the flour an airing—so the higher you hold your sieve over the bowl, the further the flour travels and the more air it incorporates.
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Flour needs a cool, dry place for storage. That’s easier said than done in a modern kitchen, I know, but do try to keep it away from a damp steamy atmosphere: a large and roomy enameled flour-bin is ideal or, failing that, tightly-lidded storage jars will do.
Whole-wheat flours have a much shorter shelf-life than white flours because the wheat germ contains oil which can in time develop a rancid flavour. I think six weeks is
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Plain household flour is usually soft flour. It won’t give such good results as strong flour for bread, but it is cheaper and quite capable of producing a home-made loaf better than many shop-bought varieties. With less gluten in it, it is the very best type of flour for cakes and short pastries (and, along with self-raising flour, is therefore dealt with in the next chapter).
White flours are normally of 70-72 per cent extraction, with hardly any traces of bran or germ left and of course bleached (actually an unbleached variety is available, and this is a pale cream color).
All flours vary in strength, according to the amount of gluten (protein) they contain. This will depend on the variety of wheat, and the type of soil and climate in which it is grown.
Strong (or ‘hard’) wheats are grown in extreme climates, as in Canada or Russia:
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These are unbleached flours in which 10-20 per cent of the grain has been extracted in the milling. Provided these are stone-ground, they are natural flours with the bran partially removed. This type of flour is sometimes referred to as ‘wheat meal’ and the loaf made from it is called wheat meal bread—lighter in texture but still with a whole-wheat-flavour. (If you like making whole-wheat bread most
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As the name suggests, this is flour ground on a traditional stone-mill. It contains the whole of a grain of wheat. Nothing has been added and nothing taken away. There has been some confusion as to what exactly is the difference between whole-wheat and whole meal. Whatever terms the millers might use to describe the coarseness of the grinding, so far as consumers are
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You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, but she will ever hurry back, to triumph in stealth over your foolish contempt.
Horace: Epistles
There’s a lot of truth in that little Latin quote, and never more so than now when technology tends to dictate, rather than serve, the needs of man. When it comes to the milling of flour and the commercial baking of bread, in this country and others, nature has indeed
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