Comments on: Kate Flour

By: Shiva

Shiva — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:21:36 +0000

As mentioned in my earlier comments, for “kate flour” to work moisture content of flour has to be reduced to ~2%. Flour will be naturally be rehydrated during cooling under room conditions. Typically moisture content is equilibrated to about ~10-11% (depending on the nature of the starch). I came across a research work from Kansas State University, who have described heating under increased moisture conditions to improve cake volume but is deleterious to cake texture. So I would not recommend using water glass in microwave along with flour.

However, increasing the moisture content of flour does reduce color formation. Color formation in flour is my two different mechanisms firstly, due to protein and starch at low moisture and peeling of starch (formation of dicarbonyl compounds). These two reactions are not favored at high moisture (which usually favors protein hydration and gelatinization).

In conclusion, using water in microwave is not theoritically favored

But I’m curious to know your results. Hope this helps.

By: Shiva

Shiva — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:08:59 +0000

The catching of flour on fire is a perfect example of uncontrolled power settings on the microwave. The recommendations that are given in your original blog are excellent at 80% power settings. The observing of fire could also be due to over heating of flour. According to the original patent (Gusek, 1995) the flour has to be dried to about 2% moisture (db).

One simple way of monitoring the moisture loss of flour is by weighing. Since your original flour contains ~13% moisture and you are drying it to ~2% moisture you will be losing 12 gms for every 100gms of flour. So when you use 280gm you will be losing around 30-33gms of the original weight. However, if you go above this charring of the flour followed by fire is inevitable.

Also, other precaution such as not using aluminum film and lead based paints in microwave have to be followed.

Thanks Kate for giving us the “kate flour”

By: Shiva

Shiva — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:59:25 +0000

Thanks for the wonderful post. I have following inputs
1. Flour heating mainly came into picture to cut down the chlorine levels in the flour.
2. If you are using chlorinated flour, heating of flour could cause detrimental effects – one that you would immediately notice is the viscosity of the batter. It would be hard to pour the batter from the mixing bowl to the cake bowl.
3. Heating flour makes the starch more hydrophilic (water hating) and helps it bind more oil as well as stabilize the gas bubbles (just like stronger film surrounding the bubbles). This is very different from baking powder. Which basically acts to produce air cells. Since you are having better air cell stability using “kate flour” the amount of baking powder can be reduced. Try 1/2 or 1/3 of the original recipe.
4. If you are making pudding try heating potato flour to have a cohesive paste after heating. Potato flour has different starch composition as compared to corn or wheat.

Hope this helps.

By: Shiva

Shiva — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:41:30 +0000

yes there is a wide available literature on flour heating using oven. Typically we have to evenly spread the flour on the pan (0.5 cm) with/without the aluminum film. Preheat your oven to 120 C and heat the flour for about 30 min to 2 hrs. For pancakes you can use 2 hrs and for bread use 30 min. Since it takes longer, usually people prefer microwave. However, it is important not to have flour dust while microwaving since it can cause a blast (minor). Hope this helps.

By: Romy

Romy — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:09:47 +0000

Hi Kate

Thanks so much for your comment on my blog. My xanthan gum arrived last week and my instant-read themometer today, so I am very excited to get home and get microwaving!

I no longer groan in frustration when I see “cake flour” in a recipe, and am so excited to try all the cakes that I skipped over until now.

Will let you know how it goes!

Best,
Romy

By: steph

steph — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 06:00:49 +0000

Hi Kate

I made sponge cakes using Kate Flour last night and although it took wayyy too long to make Kate flour (i cheated and microwaved the flour for a minute before stirring them and yeah, they turned brown, but not too bad), it actually works! My sponge cakes are lighter! Thank you!!!

You’re a genius!

Steph

By: amerrierworld

amerrierworld — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:40:03 +0000

Hi Laurel – If you have a large enough microwave, I think it possibly could work (I recall reading about a similar process in industrial heat-treatment of flour, but my microwave is way too small to fit in anything other than the flour itself!). Since the flour needs to cool before I can use it anyway, I don’t find the oven step too much of a problem (I let the flour rehydrate while it’s cooling), but if you wanted to try to maintain hydration whilst microwaving, it would be interesting to hear about your results

By: Laurel

Laurel — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:15:22 +0000

Hi Kate,
I read with interest your formulations for kate flour. I was wondering whether microwaving the flour together with a glass of water in the microwave could maintain hydration of the flour while simultaneously subjecting the flour to the microwave processes, thereby eliminating the oven step. What do you think?

By: Red Velvet Madeleines « A Merrier World

Red Velvet Madeleines « A Merrier World — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:19:15 +0000

[...] Kate Flour [...]

By: Steph

Steph — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:26:08 +0000

Thanks for replying Kate. I’ve seen cornflour being added to allpurpose as a substitute for cake flour all the time, but I guess i was just thinking that if I was taking away the all purpose flour to match protein then I didn’t need to add anything in. It’s just that I made chocolate chip cookies one time that said to add cornflour and they were horribly dry (it’s freaked me out ever since). Since Rose and you use the cornflour substitution, I will give it a try next time!