Ellie C > wrote in
:

> Rick & Cyndi wrote:
>
>> "Ellie C" > wrote in message
>> ...
>>
>>>I've been trying some favorite baking recipes from my American
>>>cookbooks but I'm now living in France and they don't come out right.
>>>Cakes come out a bit heavy and leaden. I know that French flour is
>>>different from American flour, and I wonder if there's some way to
>>>figure out how much more (or less?) to use. I do have American baking
>>>powder, so it's not that.
>>>
>>>I think French sugar is coarser than what I'm used to as well. I find
>>>it takes a lot longer to cream butter and sugar if I use standard
>>>French sugar.
>>
>> ===========
>>
>> Hmmmm... well, I'm not an expert nor do I play one on TV but my guess
>> is that the flour you are using is made with 'hard' wheat and what
>> you're needing (kneading! Ha!) is soft wheat. Unfortunately, I have
>> no idea how or where you would find what you.... WAIT a Minute... can
>> you get "cake flour"? That might fix your problems. Also, according
>> to my B H & G New Cook Book - you can substitute 1 cup Cake Flour
>> with 1 cup of All-Purpose flour MINUS 2 Tablespoons. <shrug> Does
>> that help?
>>
>> Cyndi
>>
>>
> I don't know if there's such a thing as cake flour here; I'll have to
> look more carefully next time I'm in a supermarket. But it sounds like
> to substitute ordinary flour for cake flour I'd use less, where my gut
> feeling is that I should use more. But - caveat - I'm nowhere near an
> expert at making cakes!
>
> Just Googled and found a site listing cake problems, but it's still a
> bit hard to figure out. For instance "Coarse grain and sunken center"
> could happen from too much flour or using ordinary flour instead of
> cake flour, it says(well, it had a coarse grain but it was baked in a
> tube pan, so less chance of a sunken center). But there's another
> description "Dense grain", which it says is caused by too much liquid,
> which would be even more pronounced if I used less flour. Hmmmm....
> Also, this was a cake with lots of ground fruit and nuts in it. Maybe
> I'll try making a pound cake and see how that turns out.
>

The RFC FAQ has a whole mess of stuff to say about flour.

--
Starchless in Manitoba.