All-purpose flour is the most commonly used type of flour, a mid-strength, medium-gluten flour designed to be suitable for baking everything from pizza doughs and crusty breads to pie crusts, cakes, cookies, and pancakes.
What Is All-Purpose Flour?
To understand all-purpose flour, we need to talk about wheat flour in general quickly. Different strains of wheat are naturally higher in protein than others, and the higher-protein ones are said to be “hard.” Low-protein wheat is said to be “soft.” Durum wheat, used for making pasta, is the hardest or highest-protein wheat. Soft white wheat is the weakest.
There are six wheat classes overall, and each one is milled and sometimes blended with other wheat to create flours with varying strengths. Strong flour is high-protein, high in gluten, and suitable for making pasta, pizza dough, crusty bread, etc. Weak flour is made from soft wheat, is lower in protein, and is ideal for delicate pastries and cakes.
To make it easy for home bakers so they don’t have to buy and store multiple strengths of flour, the industry developed all-purpose flour, a blend of solid and weak flours formulated to be acceptable for making crusty bread and delicate pastries and cakes. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the ideal flour for those applications. But it’s a decent middle-of-the-road flour.
Wheat flours are generally distinguished by their gluten content, and all-purpose flour is usually around 12 percent gluten, give or take a percent, depending on the brand. This compares 7.5 to 9 percent for cake flour and 13 to 14 percent for bread flour.
How to Cook With All-Purpose Flour
All-purpose flour is usually combined with leavening agents such as yeast or baking powder, along with other ingredients such as fats, eggs, sugar, and salt, and then baked in ovens or on griddles to make bread, cakes, and so on. It can also be used as a thickening agent in soups and stews (usually combined with some fat in roux).
All-purpose flour needs to be adequately measured in baking, and the way to do that is by weight. This is a more accurate way of measuring than volume (such as cups) and helps ensure your recipes turn out right. With all-purpose flour, a “cup” equals about 125 grams. Again, this will vary from one brand of flour to another. For instance, King Arthur All-Purpose Flour is 120 grams to the cup.
You can quickly figure out the conversion by checking the nutritional label on the bag of flour. It might list the serving size as 1/4 cup and show 30 grams in parentheses. That means this particular flour brand is 120 grams (30 times 4) to the cup. So if a recipe calls for 3 cups of flour, you’d need 360 grams.
Many recipes call for flour quantities by weight. Should this be the case, measure the weight required, and conversion won’t be needed. This is especially helpful if you’re using a recipe developed by that particular flour manufacturer (which is a good idea).
What Does It Taste Like?
All-purpose flour isn’t eaten on its own, and foods prepared from it derive their flavor from the other ingredients, the yeast, sugar, salt, fats, and so on, that it’s combined with, as well as from the caramelization of starches that takes place when the dough or batter is cooked. If you were to taste the flour by itself, it would taste bland, dry, and powdery.
All-Purpose Flour Substitute
If you’re making a cake that needs to be soft and tender, or a pizza dough that needs to be chewy and crusty, you might find that all-purpose flour could do better. So one of the common substitutions is to use cake flour for making cakes and cookies, pastry flour for pies, pastries, and cookies, and bread flour for making bread and pizza dough. If you decide to do this, use the exact measurement the recipe calls for; no conversion is needed.
You could convert if the recipe is given in volume quantities, but this can get complicated since different strength flours have different weights per cup. You might have better results seeking out a different recipe.
All-Purpose Flour Recipes
All-purpose flour is the most common flour that recipes are written for. All kinds of recipes for cakes, pies, cookies, breads, muffins, and other baked goods are written for all-purpose flour.
Where to Buy All-Purpose Flour
All-purpose flour is widely sold in the baking aisles of supermarkets and grocery stores.
Storage
All-purpose can be stored in a cool, dry place, like a pantry, for 6 to 8 months, assuming the package is tightly closed. If you live somewhere particularly warm or humid, you could seal the opened flour bag in a large plastic bag and keep it in the fridge. But keep it away from foods like onions and others with a strong odor, as the flour absorbs odors quickly. You can also store it in the freezer for a longer shelf life.
Things to watch out for are insects, which can lay their eggs in the flour and then hatch, and rancidity, although this is more of a problem with whole-grain flour than all-purpose flour.