Flour

There are lots of internet sites listing major differences between UK and US English - boot/trunk, faucet/tap etc - but I came across another huge minefield earlier -- flour types. Usually American recipes are 'translated' for British readers as the measuring systems are different (US uses 'cups' whereas UK uses grams), as are the temperatures (I have an electric oven, but understand temperature only in degrees Celsius; I also understand Gas Mark numbers, but I cannot fathom degrees Fahrenheit in US recipes).

 

I wanted to cook something that I found in a US recipe book, but was stumped when it said 'pastry flour'. In Britain recipes usually specify either plain flour (for bread, pancakes etc) or self-raising flour (which comes already containing a raising agent, such as baking powder, so is suitable for sponges, cakes etc). I googled 'pastry flour', but it left me more confused. In the US, as far as I could see, pastry flour seems to refer to a flour low in gluten. Well, the gluten content is rarely, if ever, highlighted on UK flour packs. Flour here in the UK is usually divided into 'plain' (sometimes 'strong plain' for heavy-duty loaves) or self-raising -- and that's it! You can buy wholemeal flour as opposed to white, but that, too, can be plain or self-raising.

 

I'm not a great cook, and my family don't expect a lot from my cooking, so I used plain flour in the recipe I was following (it was a sort of pancake where you added cottage cheese and apple to the batter mix - and in the UK I'd always use plain flour for pancakes). It tasted ok. But flour types are certainly a minefield. Cornflour is another misleading term. Here in the UK, cornflour is a very starchy product used in small amounts to thicken sauces, gravy etc. In the US, as far as I can see, it's another type of baking flour used in quite large quantities. UK cornflour is cornstarch in the US (this word is not used in the UK).

 

As for the spelling 'flour', it is related to 'flower; 'flour' was originally the 'flower' or finest part of meal, Samuel Johnson's dictionary of 1755 does not recognise a distinction between 'flour' and 'flower'.

Comments

[John]

Informative and funny. I have visions of a kitchen strewn with various thermometers, temperature conversion charts, an American-to- British dictionary and endless packages of flour.

(this from a guy who can't boil water on any temp scale)

Great post.

[Virtual Linguist]

No, John, it's all guesswork! There was an article somewhere over the weekend about how home-cooking has dropped by over 30% since the 80s, and people these days do not feel confident about cooking from scratch. Recipe books and tv programmes make it all sound more complicated than it is. It's not the end of the world if you use the wrong flour, or add too much dried fruit.

[taffdancer]

Well I've become a bit of an expert consumer of different flours lately because my son's girlfriend avoids wheat wherever possible. This has led me to experimenting with all kinds of wheat-free and gluten-free flours. We've tried rice flour, cornflour (which is not necessarily gluten-free), and various other types of flour. Interestingly, several supermarkets are offering gluten-free bread and cake ranges nowaday. I can heartily recommend Sainsbury's 'Organic and Gluten-Free Chocolate Brownies'. As they are obviously less bad for me than the run-of-the-mill ones, I tend to have two or three!

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks, Sue. I'll give them a try.

[Mrs. B]

In the US we call 'cornflour' 'corn starch' and use it the same way you do in the UK. Cornmeal is something else entirely, and it is used in large quantities as a type of flour. Its texture is very different than regular flour, though, so it's only used in certain types of recipes...most notably, corn bread.

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks for that interesting information, Mrs B.

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