I have a question for you regarding flour. I am currently blending bread flour and cake flour at a ratio of 60:40. For scones. They bake well, but since there is no egg and that it is very rich they are very temperamental. I have recently been asked to make pies and have brought in some pastry flour. I've been using it in my muffins with great results! I decided to blend the bread flour and pastry flour for the scones in a 50:50 mix. This yields a flour that has the same strength I think. I like the color of the crumb better, the scone looked so white with the cake flour. Now, after the first bake the results were mixed and do to things out of my control(It was 30 below out side and I can't keep a steady heat in the deck oven when it's that cold.) I didn't get the volume I was looking for. Not bad, but.... Certainly I need do go another bake or two to make sure.

I'll figure that out, but from other conversations that I've had, I was wondering other than being stronger and not being as bleached are there other differences between pastry flour and cake flour that would make this sort of blending not work. I've seen a lot of muffin recipes in the "Professional Pastry Chef" by Bo Frieberg that calls for blending cake and bread flour. And I'm very courious as to why pastry flour wasn't used to cut the bread flour instead

Would mind commenting.

I greatly appreciate any info.

Thank You

Matt

By d. on Sunday, January 30, 2000 - 01:01 pm: Edit

To my knowledge, pastry flour had a slightly higher protein content(8-9%) than cake flour(7-8%), so it's better for cookies, brownies, scones. All purpose flour has a protein content of about 9-11%. I think Frieberg was cutting the bread flour with cake flour to sort of make an all-purpose flour. I'll admit I haven't tried one of his muffin recipes(all that half and half!). But whenever I make muffins I use pastry flour and I've never had a problem. I actually learned a lot about the flour I was using by contacting one of the sales reps. at general mills. I think the web address is www.generalmills.com.
I make very good scones with Cameo pastry flour. I don't use egg and I use buttermilk to give it lightness because of all that butter.
Good luck!