283562 Wed Mar 01 18:39:19 -0800 2006 4 31 Home Cooking 0 1513950 I just read a post that said you can substitue whole wheat pastry flour for regular flour in muffins. Does this work for all baked goods? Brownies? Cakes? Sweet breads? Curious what your experiences have been. I just bought my first bag of it and wasn't sure what to do with it except for pie and quiche crusts. Eager to hear!! Thanks... Wed Mar 01 18:39:19 -0800 2006 0 wyf4lyf 1 1513955 Everything (as far as I know)! I've tried cakes, brownies, sweet breads, and crusts just like you have. Just remember that if your cake was white/yellow, it'll be a bit darker. Wed Mar 01 19:01:37 -0800 2006 1513950 0 nooodles 2 1513956 Diddo...to add to the list, I've also done scones. Wed Mar 01 19:06:29 -0800 2006 1513955 0 Aaron 1 1513973 As a general rule, anything that uses baking powder as a leavening agent can take whole wheat pastry flour (wwpf for short) in direct exchange for white flour. The results will taste different (of course) but the overall texture will be so similar as to preserve much of the original "intent" of a white-flour recipe. That said -- you could, however, substitute it for any all-purpose flour recipe, as noooodles and Aaron do. I don't, because I like wwpf in only certain applications. Rose Levy Beranbaum, in the Pie and Pastry bible, uses it less as-is, and more substitutes regular whole wheat in a portion of the recipe, the rest of it being white flour. She has a famous, and justly so, croissant recipe that takes whole wheat flour to new heights. I often make biscuits, and I tried to reconcile myself to making them with 100% wwpf, but they don't rise as nicely (and I refuse to up the baking powder or I will start to taste the chemicals), don't taste as rich, and just generally don't deliver the great biscuit-y texture you're looking for. And while they are only so-so out of the oven, they turn into little mealy rocks upon sitting. However, replacing a quarter or even up to half of the white flour with the wwpf makes a fine product, with the virtues of both the good texture from the white flour, and the enhanced wheaty flour from the wwpf. My biscuit recipe for this is actually the Betty Crocker 1950 edition, that says to replace 1/2 cup of the 2 cups of white flour with whole wheat flour. With regular (stone ground) whole wheat this is a good recipe, but with wwpf it's awesome (I use a total of 1 cup white and 1 cup wwpf). I'm constantly looking for new applications for wwpf. I do like it in pie/tart pastry, but I don't like it for dessert pies and tarts. But meat or fish pies, and of course quiches, especially ones made with a strong cheese in the custard, a 100% wwpf crust is EXCELLENT. I also use it in an Irish brown soda bread recipe, made with buttermilk and baked in a loaf pan rather than the free-form round shape. I'm waiting for the perfect wwpf cookie, but I haven't found it yet. I only like wwpf in a spice cake. With chocolate cakes it detracts too much from the chocolate, and with white, yellow, orange, lemon, etc, the texture is too obviously whole wheat to still feel like cake to me. But in spice cake it's excellent -- and gingerbread too. Graham flour, which is the least processed of all the whole wheat flours, is suprisingly low in protein and adapts better than you'd think to delicate baking recipes. You'll need to seek it out as it's not that easy to find, but if you're looking to get whole grains in your diet graham flour is he most whole and the most nutritious (and also goes rancid the quickest -- always store it in the fridge). I found it the most delicious, too. The ultimate, of course, is to mill your own. If you have a Kitchenaid mixer, invest the 60$ or so and buy the grain mill. The resulting flour, if you mill it from fresh whole wheat berries (smell them in the bulk foods bin -- you'll detect a faint rancid smell if they aren't fresh, if they are fresh, they won't smell of anything) will be the best you've ever tasted, including wwpf. Freshly milled flour has a higher oil and moisture content, so you may have to reduce other liquids in the recipe. It's amazing though -- it's what wheat flour is supposed to taste like. It can be used in any recipe calling for whole wheat flour, and can be used in some calling for wwpf (especially if the substitution is only partial, and not 100%). I'd encourage you to give it a try. If I make any "Eureka" discoveries in the kitchen about wwpf applications, I'll be sure to post them for you. Glad to hear there are other bakers out there using it. Wed Mar 01 19:53:10 -0800 2006 1513950 0 Mrs Smith 2 1513975 Thanks for all the info! The wwpf I ordered was from King Arthur Flour and it says "graham flour" on the bag as well as "Whole Wheat Pastry Flour." I'm eager to try this out. I am trying very much to eat as little white flour as possible. I was wondering if I used very dark chocolate in my brownies if the bittersweetness would mask the wheaty-ness of the wwpf, or if lighter, sweeter chocolate would be better. I'm a dark chocolate lover, though. Wouldn't wwpf work well with oatmeal cookies?? Wed Mar 01 20:02:18 -0800 2006 1513973 0 wyf4lyf