Q. Which type of flour has the most gluten?
A. This is sort of a mis-question as no flour actually contains gluten. They all contain various amounts of protein which when mixed with liquid and agitated, can develop into gluten. Bread flour contains the most protein (roughly 9-10%) all-purpose is next with approx 8-7%, and cake and pastry can contain as much as 6% or as little as 4%.
You can read more about flour, the types, and substitutions here in our types of flour post.
Q. What type of flour to use for pies?
A. This is a tough one. It depends on the type of dough you’re making and how flaky you want your crust to turn out.
For regular pie dough, all purpose works perfectly well, since you’re cutting the fat into the flour the strands are fully coated and shouldn’t develop too much gluten anyway.
For sweet short pastry (SSP, sweet dough or pate sucree), a combination of half bread and half cake flour works best. But whatever you have on hand will work fine.
Puff pastry requires bread flour ideally, but it’s not too common for that to be made at home. In Michel Roux’s awesome book, Pastry, he uses all purpose flour for all his doughs, and he has 3 michelin stars, so who am I to argue?
Q. Cake flour of bread flour for scones?
A. It depends on your recipe. If yours calls for the fat to be cut into the flour, then use the bread flour, for any other method, use the cake flour.
