Flour is a product of milling. This means it is already in a fine particle form. Back in the early days of flour making, the raw grain, like barley, would be pounded with rocks until it was as fine as possible. But it would be far coarser than today’s standard. Flour particles are now processed and sorted to less than a quarter of a millimeter in size. The flour classification is determined by sifting.
The varieties of flour obtained range from patent flour to straight flour, and the flour streams range from fine or first break to coarse or clear. Depending on how much of the whole endosperm was milled, patent flour is classified as long, medium, or short. Short patents come from the endosperm’s center and are high in starch. They are ideal for creating pastry flour.
With that being said, is it necessary to sift flour during ingredients preparation? Well, it is. But not to break down wheat starch. Sifting flour actually does several things to help you produce baked goods properly. Among these are to incorporate air as a leavener, sift out foreign objects, and more importantly, break up lumps.
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But not all baked products require sifting, especially if the baker only wants to correct the particles that have clumped together by settling. Take bread making, for example. Preparing flour by sifting for making bread makes no difference. This is because kneading presses the flour together.
Anyway, let’s discuss all what sifting flour does further.
Table of Contents
INCORPORATION OF AIR AS A LEAVENER
A leavener or leavening agent is a key ingredient in baking that helps dough or batter to rise and expand. Without one, a baked product would be dense and low in volume. Common leaveners are microorganisms such as yeast and lactic acid bacteria or chemical-based baking soda or baking powder. The rising effect can also happen by incorporating air through sifting flour with other dry ingredients.
In fact, air is the first leavening agent added to the cake batter. Many angel food cake recipes call for sifting the flour and sugar at least four times to guarantee appropriate air incorporation. A hassle, right? The book Science of Good Cooking by America’s Test Kitchen figured that processing the flour with half the sugar in a food processor makes sifting flour just once works.
The amount of air depends several factors. These include the mixing procedure, such as sifting of flour before adding it, beating, creaming, and so on. As a result, the amount of air that is integrated into a batter or dough combination might vary greatly.
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The creaming of fat and sugar is another process that uses air. The fat (plastic fat) aids in the incorporation and trapping of air in the batter, as well as the dispersion of air cells into small units. The product rises as air is released during heating.
SIFTING OUT FOREIGN OBJECTS
Sifting dry materials is required while preparing dough ingredients to ensure that no foreign matter is contained in the dough. In large scale baking, a bar magnet is present in the screening apparatus to remove any metal impurities. Small or trace amounts of substances must be dissolved or suspended in water before being added to flour.
Truth is manufacturing of flour has gone a long way since our ancestors first produce it by pounding it with stone. The flour produced nowadays is free from extraneous items such as husks and insects. So flour that we buy from the supermarket is free from foreign materials and other contaminants.
Well, unless there has been poor handling or storage prior to use.
BREAKIN UP LUMPS IN THE FLOUR
The main objective of sifting flour is to break up any lumps that have formed. Doing so help get an accurate measurement of the ingredient. As you can now see, sifting flour is necessary.
Sifting powdered ingredients into a cake mix disperses them and raises the amount of the flour. If left unsifted, the little clumps of flour stay together in thick clusters once water is introduced. And the clumps are difficult to break up with stirring and whisking. These aggregates thicken the walls of the small bubbles in the batter, weighing them down and resulting in a denser sponge.
Furthermore, sifting ensures consistency in product preparation by standardizing the amount of flour added to a recipe. When ingredients are weighed rather than measured, consistency is more likely. Sifting reduces the amount of flour that goes into the recipe.
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1 cup of sifted cake flour weighs approximately 3 ounces, whereas 1 cup of unsifted cake flour measured directly from the bin weighs approximately 4 ounces. Hence, one will end up with too much (or far too little) flour. To ensure the correct amount of flour, if the recipe call for “1 cup sifted flour,” sift the flour directly into a measuring cup set on top of parchment paper and level off excess flour.
In some recipes, you may encounter instructions “flour, sifted” and “sifted flour”. These are two different instructions. The former is measure first, then sift; the latter is sift first, then measure.
References:
W. Zhou, Y. H. Hui, I. DeLyn, M. A. Pagani, C. M. Rosell, J. Selman, N. Therdthai (2014). Bakery Products Science and Technology (2nd edition). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
M. Gibson (2018). Food Science and the Culinary Arts. Academic Press.
America’s Test Kitchen (2012). The Science of Good Cooking: Master 50 Simple Concepts to Enjoy a Lifetime of Success in the Kitchen. Cook’s Illustrated.
