All purpose flour

dublingal80

A lot of recipes im reading recently require all purpose flour... I looked for it in the shop yesterday and I couldnt find it

Is it in most shops? Whats the difference between that and plain or self raising flour?

thanks

DreamC

All purpose flour is just another name for plain flour.

Magic Monkey

Odlums market their's as "Cream" flour. All-purpose, plain, and cream flour are all the same thing. Self-raising flour is plain flour with the addition of raising agents, e.g. baking powder. It's typically used in cakes and sponges that have a "light" texture.

Plowman

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monkeynuz

Hi just like to point out that, although it would appear that ream and plain flour are the same, cream flour tends to be a lot finer....so things like Yorkshire puddings don't work as well with cream flour.

Just thought you might like to know!

Regards,

tscul32

think cream flour also has elements of raising agents in it whereas pure plain flour contains 100% wheatflour.

MandyM

The only All Purpose/Plain flour that I've found is (cheap) Tesco brand & St Bernard's @ Dunnes, and then Odlum's "Strong" Flour (which is for bread making). All other "plain" flours I've found here have some kind of raising agent in them, so I stay away from Odlums unless the recipe actually needs self-raising flour.

Check on the list of ingredients, if it only lists wheat flour, that's plain flour. If it mentions any form of Bicarbonate of Soda/Sodium, it's not really all purpose/plain.

Edit: I believe there are also Plain flour brands at Supervalu & Lidl etc that are 100% wheat flour, but I haven't tried them myself.

Also, I shop at 2 different Dunnes stores depending on the day, and I find the one does stock the St Bernard's plain flour while the other one doesn't. The same seems to go for the Tesco brand, not all of them seem to stock it, or they run out of stock regularly. So I'd suggest that when you find a plain/all purpose flour, remember where you got it from so you know for next time!

Plowman

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MandyM

Plowman wrote: »

What about Odlum's Cream Flour?

As far as I can tell, it's sort of the equivalent to Cake Flour (which produces a very light and airy crumb), which has a different gluten content to Plain/All Purpose flour.

When I first moved here I was using Cream Flour in my baking but had consistently different (bad) results with it, I read the ingredient list and it also contains a raising agent (or maybe it's for anti caking, either way, it's not pure wheat flour).

I use recipes using American/Australian/South African ingredients and I find using the brands of plain flour I mentioned works best for the results I want.

If I were using recipes with Irish ingredients and they listed cream flour, I'd definitely use it to get the best results

NYC_Expat

You will find that many of the "plain" flours here have raising agents and I am not sure how they differ from self-raising flours. I have mistakenly used them in American recipes calling for all-purpose flour and have been left with pancakes and cookies tasting very bitter. The poster above is right, Tesco brand has a plain flour without raising agents and so does SuperValue. Aldi has one too under the The Pantry brand. I have tried them all and regardless, I have never had any recipe calling for all-purpose flour ever turn out quite the same as when I baked in the US (don't even bother trying to make Nestle Tollhouse cookies). The butters here are different too so it is hard to know where the problem is but my family eats whatever it is anyway! Cheers.