Catherine Brown

investigates the ways

technology is affecting

the basics of baking

CONFUSED. What's this ``supreme'' sponge flour I'm being persuaded is worth a premium price? With multiple own-brands currently hitting a rock-bottom 15p for 1.5kg, will the four-times-more-expensive brand make a better cake? Or is it a just a gimmick? ``It is a very soft flour,'' says the label, ``finely milled to give your sponges, swiss rolls, light cakes, and even scones a higher rise and finer texture than normal self-raising flour.''

The flour millers (McDougalls) were unable to provide a flour technologist to explain, but their test baker, Andrew Dinsdale, described it as ``free-flow'' flour which is finely sieved and therefore won't go into lumps. Fair enough. But surely not worth a premium price for the convenience of sieving.

The other thing about this flour, says Dinsdale, is that the particles are all the same size so it produces very even results. Your 15p flour will give variable, possibly much coarser, results and be difficult to sieve. The special cake flour, however, has also been bleached or chlorinated with gas, or heat-treated.

This is done to modify the gluten or protein in flour, essential for making bread, but a nuisance in cakes since it makes them tough by preventing the absorption of fat and moisture needed to gelatinise and set the cake's delicate structure - dizzy chemistry, this cake-baking business.

To comply with the rest of Europe, bleached flour will be banned in Britain in June, when this special flour will either be chlorinated with gas or heat-treated to modify the protein.

So far then: we've got a finer flour with more even particles which has been better aerated and has the gluten inactivated which should, in theory, make a finer cake.

At this point enter Rose Levy Beranbaum. America's leading exponent of cake-baking and author of The Cake Bible, a mould-breaking book which has made her a culinary star in America where it sold half a million copies. It was published in Britain by Macmillan (1992), but just to check out the recipes using British flour, someone sent her a supply. Shock. Horror. She discovered that some of her cakes were a disaster. British flour did not produce the fine velvety crumb she was aiming for, and she arrived in London to do an intensive testing in the hope that the problem could be solved.

American cake flour, the kind Levy normally uses, is known as ``softasilk'', a highly refined, top quality, very soft, bleached flour with no raising agent added.

``It was originally developed in America for the baking industry,'' says Hugh Bradford, of Bradford's bakers in Glasgow, ``so that the professional baker had the edge over the home-baker. The American Angel Cake was the classic cake which achieved this very fine velvety crumb which was impossible to achieve at home without cake flour.''

Now, as Britain catches up, the claims made by the millers vary. While McDougalls go the whole hog and claim to produce a Supreme Sponge flour which would satisfy Levy, Homepride have stayed loyal to their claim (first made in the early sixties) that ``graded grain makes finer flour''.

``In the milling process,'' says the technical manager of Homepride, Martin Layte, ``we simply take out the finest particles for our extra-fine flour. We regard it as an all-round cake flour, not just specifically for delicate sponges. None of our flours are either bleached, chlorinated, or heat-treated.''

And he claims not much difference between the standard bag at 72p for 1.5kg (48p for 1kg) and the rigid container pack (73p for 1kg) which was targeted at those who used flour infrequently and can't be bothered with storage jars. Bero mills a light flour for cakes, and there are other own-label flours which indicate they are suitable for cakes. But whatever the brand, yes, they are necessary for a velvety tender crumb. Combine them with Levy's methods, and cake-making becomes a dawdle.

No more time-consuming creaming; her flour-batter method can be made in minutes. For a basic butter sponge, beat together a fine self-raising ``cake or sponge'' flour (250g) with caster sugar (250g) for about 30 seconds. Meantime soften (not melt) butter (250g) in microwave. Put into the flour/sugar. (Beating the sugar and flour together first, Levy claims, makes the sugar crystals puncture the starch cells making them better able to absorb liquid.)

The final procedure is to add eggs (four medium) beaten with milk (100ml) in two lots, beating in the first lot with the flour, sugar, and butter until it's very light and creamy for about 60 seconds. And then beating in the second lot for about 40 seconds. An 8/9'' round or square by 3'' size cake will take one hour to bake at 350C/180F.-.Gas 4.