[Hey Jude]

Does anyone know if an american ounce is the same as ours? I'm also struggling a bit with the flours - in the intro to this american baking book I've found it refers to 'all purpose' which I think is our plain flour, then it mentions 'cake flour' and 'self rising', now, I figured 'self rising' was the same as our self raising, but I don't know about 'cake flour', can anyone enlighten me? Many thanks, Jude.

[chrissie B]

im not 100 % on this but the all purpose is what it says you can use it for every thing and the cake i think has a rasing that is what happens here in greece , you can get the measures online but flour and say oats won tbe the same i find it very confusing .
i watch ina garten as she effortsly use her cups to measure is ther no way you can get it converted , im sure i saw a post not long ago about american measures .
sorry im not much help
chrissie b

[mumofstig]

American ounces are the same as ours.

There is a cup conversion chart here
http://www.recipes4us.co.uk/us_cups_to_weight.htm

flour types explained here
http://www.ochef.com/883.htm

I think you can buy cake/sponge flour in UK, but not sure if it's already got the raising agent in 

[Hey Jude]

Thanks for your help. Jude.

[Casey76]

I belive cake flour is milled especially fine

[Vecten]

It might be worth adding that although an American dry ounce is the same as ours, their fluid ounce is different. 

[Trillium]

North American cake and pastry flour (aka soft) is a finer type of flour milled from spring wheat rather than our all purpose flour, which you call plain, from harder winter wheat. Spring wheat contains much less gluten than hard winter wheat so it makes a more delicate pastry/cake.

No, there is no self rising agents added to our cake flour, only in the designated self-rising flour which is available but not much used over here.

Our all purpose flours can be used alone to make bread but it doesn't give as good a result as does using hard flour which is bread flour with a higher gluten content.

Hope that helps. Here's more info about North American flours:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_flour

[hamstergbert]

If I remember correctly I think US 'cake' flour is UK 'plain' and US 'plain' flour is UK 'strong'.

US dry ounces are the same as UK dry ounces, as has already been pointed out US fluid ounces are slightly larger than UK fluid ounces.

Of course, troy ounces are rather larger than standard avoirdupois system dry ounces too!

[Trillium]

sorry, hamster, but that's a bit off. Strong flour here is high gluten bread-making flour and you definitely don't want to use it for general baking, and definitely not for more delicate cakes and pastries. It's the flour used in bread machines.

I've heard UK plain flour equaled to our all purpose (does most stuff) flour which is better for all purpose baking, gravy making, cookies, etc. You can do bread with it but strong flour is much better.

Our cake flour is totally useless for bread or yeast risen baked goods as its very low in gluten which is what makes bread stiff and helps create the 'bubbles' inside.

[hamstergbert]

thanks Trill - makes sense. 

Mind you if the commercial 'vaguely but only very slightly breadlike substance' passed off as bread in a large country to the South of you is anything to go by, I don't suppose they get through much by way of strong/hidh gluten flour!

[Trillium]

Most commercial breads either side of the border here are pants. They use a lower gluten, heavily processed form of bread flour specially made for them to cut costs yet produce a reasonable looking loaf (my late FIL was a master baker at a huge plant). My preference in shop breads is a hearty multi grain bread that costs a bit, and I don't mind as one slice is quite filling for breakfast. However, I bought this same brand of multi grain in a larger loaf at Costco and was deeply disappointed to find that these loaves, while longer, were more lightweight and airier and distinctly smelling of more yeast.    Won't buy that one ever again.

I'm definitely going to start baking my own bread again because the costs and varieties are just not worth it. For what I pay for 3 loaves, i can buy a 10K sack of high quality bread flour. At the moment I'm a bit short of time to bake, but that will change soon.

[thecakebaker]

us all purpose - uk plain flour
us self rising is the same in the uk
us cake flour is a finer flour you can get it in the uk from the likes of some tesco/morrisons stores
us strong flour - uk strong bread flour