Understanding Flour
Wheat starch or tang meen fun, all the gluten has been removed. When
mixed with water it produces a pastry dough. It is mainly used as a
wrapping for dumplings such as ‘har kar’or ‘choy pau.’ It cannot be
substituted with potato or other starches. It has different properties
and will give food a different texture. It is essential that the
proportion of wheat stach to water be well balanced when making the
pastry for har kau
Potato flour or potato starch is flour ground from dried potatoes; it
is carbohydrate based thickener with little protein, useful for people
who have to avoid gluten flours. It is used primarily for making
commercial potato bread in combination with plain or strong flour or as a
thickener for soups, gravies and Chinese stir fly dishes. The high
starch content in potato flour encourages rapid fermentation and quick
rise in yeast doughs. As such as a starch or thickening it has greater
power than cereal starch and smaller quantities are required. It also
gives a more translucent finish to soups and sauces as compared with
corn flour or tapioca flour
Sago is dried starch granules derived from the pitch of sago tree.
Sago flour is very rich in starch and has the same thickening ability
as tapioca flour. In fact sago and tapioca flour may be used
interchangeably for making kuih, bread and cakes.
Rice flour (includes white rice flour and nuttier brown rice flour)
Substitutes: cake flour (especially if the rice flour is intended to
soften the texture of a baked good) OR barley flour (also delivers a
softer texture to baked goods) OR pastry flour (also delivers a softer
texture to baked goods) OR (for those allergic to wheat) spelt flour
(makes baked goods heavier) OR potato flour OR millet flour
Difference between Bread Flour and all Purpose flour
Wheat flours contain a protein called gluten which, in the presence
of water, forms an elastic network throughout the dough. This is the
stuff that gives bread doughs their rubbery consistency. The whole
point of kneading bread dough, in fact, is to organize the strands of
gluten running through the dough into a strong, resilient,
interconnected web. It is this web of protein that will entrap the
bubbles of CO2 given off by the yeast as it ferments, enabling the
dough to rise. Without the gluten, the CO2 would just bubble up to the
surface and be lost.
But flour vary greatly in both the quantity and quality of the
gluten they contain because different strains of wheat from different
regions and different growing seasons have different gluten profiles.
There are times when gluten is not your friend; in a cake batter,
excess gluten will create a chewy, coarse-grained cake, and in pastry
doughs it will produce a tough pie crust. But for bread you want lots
of strong gluten to produce a well-risen and well-shaped loaf. This is
why there are special flours for special purposes: cake flour, pastry
flour, bread flour, etc.
All-purpose flour is typically a blend of "hard" and "soft" wheats
which will perform pretty well in most roles. It usually contains
10-12% gluten. It can be used for bread, but will tend to produce a
denser, flatter loaf. Some people will add 1T extra per cup of flour
when using all-purpose for bread.
Bread flours have from 12-14 percent protein. They will feel
decidedly more elastic while kneading, and will give full, rounded
loaves. These flours are made from hard winter wheats from northern
states.
Besides the quantity, the quality of the gluten will vary. Some
glutens are better at forming the elastic network than others. You can
judge this for yourself by making a "gluten ball" from different
flours: make a stiff dough using just water and 1/4 c of flour. Knead
it until it becomes quite elastic, then continue kneading it between
your fingers under a stream of water. This will wash out the starch
from the flour and after a few minutes of this you will have a ball of
pure gluten. By playing with this ball, stretching and folding it, you
will see that some are far more resistant to tearing than others. A
good bread flour will enable you to pull the gluten into a thin
membrane.
Varies Types of flour
Gluten free flours - As explained above gluten is
what makes wheat-based bread dough so sticky and elastic. This helps
the dough hold in the air bubbles created by the yeast so that it will
rise and eventually bake into a fluffy, porous loaf. If you're
gluten-intolerant, though, you'll need to use gluten-free flour, along
with an arsenal of ingredients to make it behave like it has gluten.
SUPERLITE FLOUR
Just another name for Hong Kong flour made in Singapore and
Malaysia. Superlite is a super soft flour. The Flour have been beached
to give a very white texture. It is best used for making Hong Kong
type steamed buns (bao), Japanese castella cake, Malay sponge cake
(kueh baulu) and others where a specially soft and light texture is
required. This flour is also referred to as "Hong Kong Flour" by some
users.
TOP FLOUR
Just another name of flour made in Singapore and Malaysia. Top Flour
is an extra-fine quality flour to give exceptionally smooth and fine
texture for your baking needs. It is especially ideal for baking very
fine cakes; such as chiffon cakes, swiss rolls, crepes, cake doughnuts
and butter cookies.
Cake flour is a finely milled flour made from soft wheat. It has
very low gluten content,
making it suitable for soft-textured cakes and cookies. The higher
gluten content of other flours would make the cakes tough. Related
to cake flour are masa harina (from maize), maida flour (from wheat or
tapioca), and pure starches. Cake Flour is a superb quality,
soft-as-silk flour. It has excellent tolerance to a high amount of
butter and sugar, resulting in cakes of good volume. This flour is best
used for baking sponge cakes and very rich cakes like pound cakes.
To Substitute cake flour made in Malaysia and Singapore - Mix ¾
cup gluten free flour plus ¼ cup plain flour . Cake flour does not
have Sugar or baking powder added .
Optima flour is a premixed cake mix flour made in Singapore for making sponge cake.
It contains
sugar and
baking powder and o
ther conditioner to give nice texture of cake.
To substitute Optima flour, just substitute any
sponge cake mix of any brand available.
All-purpose or plain flour is a blended wheat
flour with an intermediate gluten level, which is marketed as an
acceptable compromise for most household baking needs. Plain Flour
is an all-purpose flour, best used for making cakes, pancakes,
pastries, batter and as a thickener. This flour is also ideal for
Oriental specialities like Chinese dumpling (bao), Chinese dough
fritters (yu tiao) and roti prata.
Bleached flour ( Hong Kong Flour or Water Lily
flour) is treated with flour bleaching agents to whiten it (freshly
milled flour is yellowish) and to give it more gluten-producing
potential. Oxidizing agents are usually employed, most commonly organic
peroxides like acetone peroxide or benzoyl peroxide, nitrogen dioxide,
or chlorine. A similar effect can be achieved by letting the flour
slowly oxidize with oxygen in the air ("natural aging") for
approximately 10 days; however, this process is more expensive due to
the time required.
Bread flour
Bread Flour is a high-protein flour, ideal for making all varieties of bread, buns and other flour-based products.
Self-rising cornmeal To make your own: Combine one
cup cornmeal, one cup flour, one tablespoon baking powder, one teaspoon
salt, and 1/4 cup butter or other fat
Pastry flour or cookie flour or cracker flour has
slightly higher gluten content than cake flour but lower than
all-purpose flour. It is suitable for fine, light-textured pastries
Self-rising or self-raising flour is flour ("white"
wheat flour or wholemeal) that is sold premixed with chemical leavening
agents. It was invented by Henry Jones. Typical ratios are the
following:
a pinch to ½ teaspoon salt
Metric:
100 g flour
3 g baking powder
1 g or less salt
Self-Raising Flour is a premium quality flour blended with the right
amount of leavening agents. It is best suited for baking cakes, hot
cakes such as American pancakes and cookies. It is also excellent as a
batter for frying chicken, fish, prawns and banana fritters.
Corn (maize) flour is popular in the Southern and
Southwestern US and in Mexico. Coarse whole-grain corn flour is usually
called corn meal. Corn meal that has been bleached with lye is called
masa harina (see masa) and is used to make tortillas and tamales in
Mexican cooking. Corn flour should never be confused with cornstarch,
which is known as "cornflour" in British English
Tapioca flour, produced from the root of the
cassava plant, is used to make breads, pancakes, tapioca pudding, a
savoury porridge called fufu in Africa, and is used as a starch.
WHOLEMEAL FLOUR
Wholemeal Flour is a high-protein high-fibre flour specially milled
for the health-conscious. Just mix equal quantities of Prima's
Wholemeal and Bread Flour to make delicious and nutritious wholemeal
bread, buns and cookies.
SEMOLINA FLOUR
Semolina is a granulated wheat flour. It is best for making sugee
cake, semolina pudding, cookies and soup as well as baby weaning food.
Rice flour :
Glutinous rice flour or sticky rice flour, used in east and southeast Asian cuisines for making tangyuan etc.
Brown rice flour is of great importance in
Southeast Asian cuisine. Also edible rice paper can be made from it.
Most rice flour is made from white rice, thus is essentially a pure
starch, but whole-grain brown rice flour is commercially available
Noodle flour is special blend of flour used for the making of Asian style noodles
Tang flour or wheat starch is a type of wheat flour
used primarily in Chinese cooking for making the outer layer of
dumplings and buns. It is also used in Vietnamese cuisine, where it is
called bột lọc trong
Mung Bean Starch and water use to make bean thread, bean vermicelli, or slippery noodles
Ref:
http://www.recipies.50webs.com/undestanding%20flour.htm
