Cooking Tips: All About Flour

I found out this useful information and would like to share with all of you a little bit about flour. There are many types and let find out which one is more suitable for baking cakes, cookies, pastries, breads and etc.

1. All Propose Flour.
Most common flour and most available in the market. It is suitable for baking cakes, biscuits, pastries or breads. It contains moderate protein about 9-10.5%.

2. Bread Flour.
Also known as high protein flour which contains up to 12.6-13.6% of protein. It is most suitable for making pastries and breads. Gluten will be produced by kneading the flour and will give chewy texture to the bread.

3. Pau Flour
Pau is a steamed filled-bun. This flour is so white and will give the bun soft and fine texture. The protein content for this flour is 9.5 - 10.5%.

4. Superfine Flour.
Also known as the cake flour. It is low in protein content and suitable for baking cakes and pastries.

5. Red Rose Flour.
This flour has a little bit of corn flour mixed in and it will give the crunchy texture. So, it is most suitable for making all kind of biscuits.

6. Water Lily Flour.
Also known as Hong Kong flour and it is very white in colour and fine. It is use to make layered cake or pau and will give a soft texture.

7. Hoen Kwe Flour.
This flour is made from mung beans (kacang hijau) and is used in most of Malaysian's cuisine such as Kuih Seri Muka and Pandan Layered Cake. It is sold in 85g packets and can be found in various colour such as green, red, white and yellow.

8. Self Raising Flour
It is one of the cake flour and contains a little bit of sodium bicarbonate and baking powder mixed in. If you use this flour for baking, there is no need to add more of the sodium bicarbonate or baking powder more into the recepi.

9. Glutinous Rice Flour.
It is called Tepung Pulut in Malaysia yang imported mostly from Thailand. This flour is high in amylopectin and the texture is chewy, sticky and more elastic compared to other flour. This flour to make dessert such as Onde-onde, Mochi (Japanese cuisine), dumpling etc.

10. Rice Flour.
This flour has no gluten compared to wheat flour which has high gluten and this criteria make the texture of the food hard and crunchy. It can be use to make coating batter for frying, rice biscuit, rice vermicelli or rice noodles.

11. Wholemeal Flour.
This is a purely made from wheat and has high in fiber. Normally, it is used to make breads or heavy textured muffins.

12. Custard Flour.
Besides giving a good aroma, this flour will makes your cake texture more dense. You can add or replace some of wheat flour if you like for a good texture. But if you want more fluffy cake texture, try adding baking powder and sodium bicarbonate to the wheat flour.

13. Tapioca Flour.
It also called Tepung Ubi or Tepung Kanji in Malaysia. It is high in starch and use to thicken the batter.

14. Cornflour.
This flour is obtain from milled whole kernel of corn. Cornflour can be mixed with wheat flour to reduce gluten for cakes, pastries and cookies. It is also used as binder, thickener and filler.