Flour

Recently, I've gotten a few questions about the flour/s I use. I'm no expert, but I can tell you what I like to keep around:

All-Purpose Flour
If you're only going to keep one kind of flour in your house, keep all-purpose. As the name indicates, it can be used for all purposes. Nice how that works, no? It may not work quite as well for some purposes, but it will not fail. And having lived in Chicago/New York for the past six years, I'm very sympathetic to people who want just one kind of flour. Sometimes, you just don't have the space for eight kinds of flour. Or you don't bake enough to warrant keeping a variety around. When I buy AP flour, I buy unbleached.

Bread Flour
If you get into baking bread or making your own pizza dough, bread flour is worth a try. It's flour with a high gluten content. You can thank gluten for the stretchiness of pizza dough, the chewiness of baguettes, etc. Don't use bread flour to bake cakes or anything whose desired texture is light and delicate. Again, I use unbleached bread flour when I bake bread.

Whole Grain (or Whole Wheat) Pastry Flour
Whole grain pastry flour is a dream. It has a low protein/gluten count, so it's light and crumbly the way you want your cupcakes to be. And the whole-graininess of it doesn't get in the way. If you've ever tried to substitute straight whole-wheat flour for AP in a cake recipe, you know that you end up with a tough dessert that only your seventies granola mom could love (no dig at Ina May, by the way, I love love Spiritual Midwifery!). I regularly substitute whole grain pastry flour for either AP or regular pastry (also called "cake") flour in recipes. You can also use half whole grain pastry/half AP. Don't use whole grain (or regular) pastry flour for bread. Use it with caution for muffins, pancakes, cookies, and other baked items that might have a denser standard.

Whole Wheat Flour
I know it's good for me, but I don't really love whole wheat (regular) flour. I keep it around and use it in bread occasionally, but only as a blend with unbleached white flour. And even then, I'll tend to use a maybe 1/4 whole wheat to 3/4 white. I'm just not a fan of the texture whole wheat flour produces. It also tends to have a sweeter taste than white flour, which isn't always ideal. Even though I do buy whole wheat dry pasta (begrudgingly), I would never use it to make fresh pasta. It's just not suited to that bendy genre.

Rice Flour
Also known as "ground rice," rice flour really shines in hot oil. As a coating or batter for fried foods, it yields a crisper exterior than wheat flour tends to. I haven't experimented much with using rice flour as a substitute for wheat flour in baked goods, but I'm sure there's lots to explore there, especially for people with gluten allergies.

Chickpea Flour
I only recently tried chickpea flour, and was very pleased with the result. The bag told me it could be used in place of wheat flour in dishes where a "beany" taste is appropriate. I noticed that the pancakes I made with chickpea flour were soft and pliable. Perhaps not stretchy, but I would guess it's closer in texture to wheat flour than rice flour.

What else is there? Cornmeal? I think with cornmeal we might be moving away from flours and into something else. Meal, I suppose. Anyway, you know what to use cornmeal for, right? Corny things!

What kinds of flour do you use regularly?