The Fresh Loaf

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Cake flour vs 00 flour help!

CalGal's picture
CalGal

Cake flour vs 00 flour help!

Is it possible or wise to use Italian 00 flour instead of cake flour for cake making? I'm in a pinch, could not locate cake flour yesterday but do the 00 flour and I must make a birthday cake today.

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

What info can you read about the content of the flour?  Also what kind of 00 flour is it? 

What other flours do you have available and do you have any starches?  Cake flour is very low in gluten proteins.  If you have AP,  you can substitute 1/3 of it with starch, like corn starch to end up with cake flour.

Slainte's picture
Slainte

From what I've read, cake flour has a very low protein content (7-9%) and is finely milled. Italian 00 flour is even more finely milled and has a slightly higher protein content (8-11.5%).

 

Did you make the cake? How did it turn out?

fotomat1's picture
fotomat1

all the time since it is difficult to find unbleached cake flour...works fine for me.

CalGal's picture
CalGal

Thank you all for your helpful comments. After searching forums a bit, I found a person in Italy who uses 00 flour for cakes regularly, that was enough for me, so I baked the cake and will be eating some tonight… I will let you know. However there was a little issue with me forgetting to pre-heat the oven! It had to sit out while the oven came to proper temp… sigh. It did look alright but tasting will really be more revealing. BTW it is organic Italian flour called Molino Grassi.

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

from the bottom...

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/09/prweb12200060.htm

Still am interested in what the side panels have to say.  :)

CalGal's picture
CalGal

 

The side panel says:

Nutrition facts per ¼ cup (30 g)

Calories     102

Fat   0.33 g     0.5%

+ Trans  0 g

Cholesterol   0 mg

Sodium 0 mg

Carbohydrate  20.4 g        7%

Fiber  1.19 g       4.8%

Sugars  0.60 g

Protein  3.69 g

Vit. A  0%

Vit. C  0%

Calcium  0.45%

Iron   2%

Thank you for the article, I hope to try that flour.

The birthday cake was cut last night, the texture was a little strange, it was a bit dense with larger long holes in the more finely textured cake. It wasn't as light as I would have liked but passed the taste test. It was Belgian Chocolate Cake with Morello Cherry filling and frosted with White Chocolate Ganache.

I am going to make another one and pre-heat the oven this time! 

 

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

and almost 4g fiber  (in 100g)    Much higher protein and ash than cake flour.  But the cake sounds tasty!  Have I had my chocolate ration today?    Lower in carbohydrates too with 68g per 100g.

Spelt also makes some nice cakes.

CalGal's picture
CalGal

If I still can't find cake flour locally I'll try your suggested method of cutting AP with cornstarch. Do you happen to know of a chart that compares all of the aspects of different flours?

CalGal's picture
CalGal

 

Thank you so much for the great charts! Next time I'll try searching prior to asking. Is Escosia a search engine?

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

search engine.