Flour & Dry Baking Staples

Here's what you should know about this special variety of sugar.

Not only is it easy to make at home, but it's also easy to substitute.

Here's everything you need to know about this Passover staple and star of recipes like matzo ball soup.

Our local grocery stores carry a wide variety of flours that are great for all sorts of baking projects. Among the many types of flours available are white all-purpose, white whole-wheat, and regular whole-wheat flour. Regular whole-wheat flour is made from whole wheat grains, also known as kernels, and has a recognizable tan or beige color. White all-purpose flour (aka the kind you’re probably most used to baking with) is made from only part of the wheat grain known as the endosperm.

It's for way more than just pudding.

You'll get berries in every bite.

The winner comes from a professional pastry chef, so you know it works!

We’ve all faced ingredient conundrums and last-minute shortages in the kitchen. Oh no! Out of eggs! No heavy cream! Need a buttermilk substitute! Thankfully, there are a few tried-and-true substitutions you can turn to in a pinch. These can also be helpful if you’re trying to modify a recipe out of dietary necessity (shifting it to be dairy or gluten-free, for example). This guide will help get you started.

Trust me — you'll use it way more than you might think.

No, literally everything — you can even use it in spaghetti sauce, Buddy.

Professional bakeries are packed full of flour varieties — whole-wheat, rye, spelt, and more — but most grocers sell a smaller variety of all-purpose, self-rising, and bread flours. If all-purpose flour, as its name suggests, is good enough for most baking projects, then why do many bread, pizza dough, and even some cookie recipes call for bread flour?

Obviously, pizza.

Here's why you should keep both on hand.

It's just two ingredients!

No sugar? No problem! These smart substitutions are already in your kitchen.

Yes, you can still bake if you're out of all-purpose flour.

Your baked goods will look prettier, longer.

Answer: The solution is already in your pantry.

You don't even have to do any extra work.

Even though the gluten-free market has come a long way, there’s still a lot to learn, if you’re trying to make the switch.

This is *much* better than regular sugar.

It's the secret to better baked goods.

What: To Your Health Sprouted Flour Co. Read the series → Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four Love really good popcorn, but don’t want to take the time to make it the old-fashioned way? Use sprouted corn kernels in place of conventional popping corn, and you can achieve popcorn perfection with the convenience of your microwave. Here’s how to do it. The keys to great popcorn are the multiple mini-explosions created when heat turns the moisture in each kernel into steam.

We never even considered milling our own grain until we started doing a lot more multi-grain baking and cooking. Those quinoa and spelt flours get expensive! It sure would be nice to buy the whole-grains or nuts for these flours in bulk and grind them ourselves at home. Do any of you do this?We’ve been using our food processor to do some very basic milling. Pour in the nut or grain, give it a few good pulses, and manage to get a fairly decent flour.

While we haven’t given up on making our own soba noodles, we do have almost an entire bag of leftover buckwheat flour just begging to be used in creative and interesting ways. We’ve had whole buckwheat groats a few times, but we have less experience with the ground flour. Any suggestions?The challenge with buckwheat flour is two-fold. First, it has a fairly strong, bitter flavor that can easily overwhelm a recipe.

Chickpea flour has been getting a whole lot of love recently in the food world, and for good reason. Not only is it gluten-free, but it’s also packed with protein, fiber, and flavor that makes it an incredibly useful ingredient in any kitchen. First, it’s important to know what chickpea flour is if you’re unfamiliar. Basically, it’s dry chickpeas that have been ground up finely into a flour — that’s it!

Dates seem to be having their time in the superfood spotlight. Full of potassium, iron, B vitamins, and fiber, this sweet fruit is being churned into paste and syrup, and even being dried and turned into sugar. Does date sugar rival its granulated counterparts when it comes to baked goods, and does it hold the same nutritional power as whole dates? We did some digging to learn all about how date sugar is made and how we can (and cannot) use date sugar in the kitchen.

Cauliflower flour is here to make all your low-carb, gluten-free baked goods an (easier) reality. It’s a fantastic development that will be great for Paleo and keto dieters, people who don’t eat gluten, and anyone who wants to cut down on carbs in their baking. It is, however, driving me absolutely bonkers today, because every time I say the words “cauliflower flour,” the conversation devolves into a Who’s on First-style comedy routine.

Among the rows of all-purpose, pastry, cake, whole-wheat, and alternative flours (like almond and coconut) stands bright-blue canisters that look like they may have been there for decades. That’s good ol’ Wondra flour. I’ve walked past it for years, intrigued by the vintage-looking label but never enough to stop and really find out what it actually is and what makes it stand apart from the rest.

On the hunt for chocolate chips at the grocery store, you may have come across carob chips. Although they do look strikingly similar to the classic cookie favorite, carob chips are not chocolate. While chocolate stems from cocoa pods, carob stems from carob pods. On shelves, it can typically be found in two forms: chips and powder. So what exactly is carob? Here are the facts. Carob comes from a pod of a tree of the same name, which is native to the Mediterranean.

While both flours are 100 percent whole wheat, the difference is in the variety of whole wheat.

You simmer up a big pot of soup and it’s just too brothy for your liking — what to do? Head to the pantry. There’s a smart ingredient that thickens soups and sauces that you might never have thought to use before. Forget corn or potato starch or even a quick slurry and look to chickpea flour instead. Made from ground dry chickpeas, this gluten-free flour is a great thickener.

If you’re already embracing chickpea flour, in socca and other gluten-free treats, here’s a way to enjoy it even more. It takes less than 15 minutes of your time and makes the flour even more rich and flavorful before using it. Toasting chickpea flour brings out its nutty aroma and flavor while adding texture, making it an even more complex ingredient.

If you've browsed the varieties of flours at the grocery store lately, you've likely come across chickpea flour.

Q: I have tried many times to make puff pastry, but I always fail. I do not like the taste of the commercial products, so I have been determined to make puff pastry from scratch. What would happen if I used half self-rising flour and half all-purpose flour on your recipe to give the dough some help with rising? Any advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated!

If, a few years ago, someone told you that 2016 would be the year of bread and butter, would you have believed them? If you were me, you would not have. Instead, you would have snorted and wondered, how could these basic staples be #trending? But now that we’re well into 2016, I’d argue that that predictor of food cool was absolutely right.

You know that George Harrison song I’ve Got My Mind Set on You? It goes something like, “It’s gonna take time, a whole lot of precious time / It’s gonna take patience and time / To do it, to do it, to do it right.” I may have left out a few “to do its,” but you get the idea. The point is: Harrison may as well have been singing about bread. So how long should bread take?

When people who know about bread talk about bread, they often talk about ratios. A common ratio for bread is five to three, which importantly refers to weight (not cup) measurements — so 500 grams of flour to 300 grams of water, for example. But according to Adam Leonti, baker-in-chief at Brooklyn Bread Lab, less flour is more, or rather more water is more, if your goal is to make bread with big, beautiful holes.

When it comes to baking bread, you’ve got a few different flour options. In addition to the regular suspects on your grocery store shelves — notably all-purpose and bread flours — the recent renaissance of stone-milled flours has added greater choice and complexity to this essential bread decision. And if you opt for the stone-milled stuff, or any whole-wheat flour, different rules of storage and shelf-life apply.

Q: After my food processor broke down I asked my mother for a small jar of oat flour. Unfortunately we have a different understanding of what small means! I now have a two-liter jar full of oat flour sitting in pantry and I don’t know what to do with it. I want to use it up, but can’t find recipes that use a lot of it. Any suggestions? Sent by Mia Editor: I hope you’re ready for some baking, Mia! How have you used it in the past?

While you likely have white granulated sugar tucked in the pantry, you might not always have a box of powdered or confectioners sugar on hand. Although it’s not called for in as many recipes as regular sugar, it’s an essential ingredient to make the best cake frosting or when decorating other sweets.

Q: I was wondering about frying chicken. I use a resealable bag to put my flour in, along with my spices, and then I shake my chicken pieces in it. There seems to be a lot of flour left after I am through shaking; is this same flour OK to use in my chicken gravy? It just seems to be a waste to throw it out. I’ve been doing this for most of my life and I have always wondered if it would be OK. I always forgot to ask my mother and grandmother, and now they are both gone.

Q: When dredging chicken cutlets, do you the use flour, buttermilk, and eggs before coating in breadcrumbs? Sent by Phyllis Editor: Each element in the breading process has a purpose. When you know what each does, it’s easy to remember what order to use when breading chicken (or whatever protein you’re using). This will also help you out with substitutions when you need them. Here’s the basic method to remember: wet → dry → wet → dry.

Here we are on Shrove Tuesday (aka Pancake Day), a high holy day for those devoted to pancakes. I’ve got more than four decades of dedication to the griddle under my belt, so I’m sharing my 10 Pancake Commandments to help steer you to some of the best pancakes on the planet. Along the way you might find deep satisfaction. Knowing how to make a quick, hot meal like pancakes is very rewarding.

Q: Day 1: I mixed 4 ounces of bread flour with 4 ounces of water in a small mixing bowl, covered it loosely with plastic, and set it in a place where the temperature was about 75°F. Day 2: After 24 hours, there was definite activity (bubbles) and I gave it a feeding of another 4 ounces of flour and 4 ounces of water. Day 3: More bubble activity and another feeding. Day 4: I checked it in the morning and all yeast activity had stopped.

Stone milling is nothing new — it’s the way flour was made for thousands of years before electricity came onto the scene — but lately, it’s having something of a renaissance. In addition to historic stone mills still functioning around the country — some of them still run by waterpower — new mills are popping up and artisan bakeries are even installing their own mills so they can grind flour on the premises. The result?

A pantry staple, flour is an ingredient you might not have given much thought. But these days, there’s a surprising selection of flours in your grocery store’s baking section. There’s all-purpose of course, but also pastry flour, cake flour, and bread flour. You can also choose between bleached and unbleached, white and whole-wheat — and then there’s the wide world of alterna-grain (i.e., non-wheat) flours. But do you actually know what flour is?

The Kitchn’s Baking School Day 16: All about sugar and baking. Join The Kitchn’s Baking School: Sign up and see all The Kitchn’s Baking School assignments Wouldn’t you agree that the most characteristic trait of baked goods, desserts, and pastries is their sweetness? From delectable desserts to breakfast pastries, almost everything that comes out of the pastry kitchen contains sugar, in one form or another.

I have a particular fondness for ancient grains, so when I was recently introduced to einkorn, I was intrigued and curious to know more — especially since it’s thought to be the most ancient of wheat varieties available today. Armed with a bag of all-purpose einkorn flour and Einkorn: Recipes for Nature’s Original Wheat, I did some reading, then took to the kitchen.

It seems like such a hassle when a recipe calls for buttering (or greasing) and then flouring a cake pan. And when the author also mentions lining the pan with parchment, that’s yet another step to add to the list of things that need to be done to get that cake in the oven. Are all these precautions really necessary? In short, whether or not you have to grease (or grease and flour) your cake pan really depends on the recipe you are making.

Gluten is a word in action these days, popping up on labels at the grocery store, in the news, and all over the Internet. Many of us have even chosen to eliminate gluten from our diets — but I have to ask: Do you really know what gluten is? Here’s a guide to the science of gluten and what that little word actually means. A bread dough that is just mixed, and that you haven’t kneaded at all, looks completely different after you’ve slaved over it for 10 minutes.

In this video, we share our quick trick for softening brown sugar when you find your sugar is getting a little too rocky for that chocolate chip cookie fix on the horizon. So simple, right? Once you’ve got your brown sugar in order, cookies can be yours! → Read our original tip here: A Simple Way to Soften Hard Brown Sugar in a Hurry Where Does the Brown in Brown Sugar Come From?

Q: When adding dry ingredients to wet with the mixer on low speed, the flour sprays over the mixer as well as the counter and floor. I purchased the guard and have it snapped onto the rim of the bowl. Any other suggestions to help prevent the mess? Sent by Sharon Editor: There’s actually an easy fix to keep your dry ingredients from making a mess after you turn the mixer on! Just drape a kitchen towel over the bowl before you turn it on.

Are you making a traditional lasagna filled with layers of creamy béchamel? Maybe you are cooking a quick beef and Chinese broccoli stir-fry for dinner with a sauce that’s loaded with ginger and garlic? Or perhaps you’re considering making a sweet, thick vanilla pastry cream to fill a fruit tart this weekend? In most cases, the secret to a thick sauce (or filling) that coats food evenly is starch, whether plain flour, cornstarch, tapioca starch, or even arrowroot starch.

We know and love cornmeal as the foundation for soft, buttery cornbread, but don’t let that be the only way you use it. This is one versatile pantry staple that’s capable of quite a lot. From breakfast to dinner to dessert, here are five ways to cook and bake with cornmeal. Want to up your pancake game next weekend? Sure you do! Add-ins are always great (I mean, who can turn down those fresh blueberries?), but it’s time to go bigger.

Advice from: Peggy Sutton of To Your Health Sprouted Flour Co. Read the series → Part One, Part Two, Part Three If you placed a mound of conventional flour and sprouted flour side by side, you might not be able to tell, just by looking, which was which. But Peggy Sutton, owner of To Your Healthy Sprouted Flour, insists that your taste buds would be able to discern the difference. Ready to try your hand at baking with sprouted flour? Here are three tips for making the most of it.

I love baking and cooking with a freshly opened package of brown sugar. I love packing it tightly into a measuring up and that oh-so-satisfying feeling I get when it flips out, perfectly molded, like sand for a sand castle. So how is brown sugar made, and what’s the difference between light brown and dark brown sugar? Brown sugar is a bit of a generic term — it’s simply sugar that contains molasses, with the molasses giving it that distinctive brown color and flavor.

Whole wheat flour adds more nutrition, not to mention nutty and tasty flavor, to baked goods and other flour-based recipes. However, this flour can sometimes make the finished product seem drier and produce a coarser texture than using a more refined all-purpose flour. But that’s actually easy to deal with: here’s the number one thing you should remember when baking with whole wheat flour! When baking with whole wheat flour, let the batter rest and hydrate before baking!

I’ll confess that while I do own a flour sifter, it usually stays in the back of one of my kitchen drawers, unused. Recipe instructions for baked goods can be all over the map when it comes to sifting — some insist that you sift multiple times, while some don’t have you do it at all. Is the process of sifting really necessary?

How well do you know your sugar varieties? What’s the difference between turbinado and demerara? Is caster sugar the same as powdered sugar? From white sugar to cane sugar to rich brown sugar, here are 11 sugar varieties you need to know, plus our favorite ways to use them. When you think about sugar, the first thing that probably comes to mind is sweetness. And while it does sweeten baked goods, savory dishes, and drinks, the uses for sugar are many.