Cake flour; Do We Need it and Why? An Explanation of Gluten and the Effects Thereof, and Other Factors in the Specialness and Particularity of Flour…

My response to a friend's question...

It seems like a silly way to make you buy more stuff, but there are a few real differences between cake flour, standard flour, and bread flour, and they can make a real difference in how your baked goods come out.
The first issue is GLUTEN. Cake flour has a much lower protein content than regular flour. Bread flour has more. Yes, Virginia, there is protein in flour. It is called gluten. (I know about this more than most because one of my nearest and dearest suffer from Celiac Disease, where he suffers greatly from ingesting any of this said gluten, but that is another story. Anyone interested in financing my gluten free restaurant, please contact me.) Gluten is very good for bread, as it creates a stretchy dough. You want bread to have some bite and heft. But cake should be light and fluffy, not chewy. So, cake flour = less gluten, bread = more gluten.
Cake flour is also milled from specific types of wheat that have lower protein contents, extra finely, and often bleached more, the result causing the protein in the flour to break down even further. This causes cake flour to be better than other flours at two important things – making sure that that it holds large amounts of fat and sugar, while still remaining fluffy and light.
Bread flour, on the other hand, is made from wheat known to have higher gluten content, and will have small amounts of malted barley flour and vitamin c or potassium bromate added. These additives help yeast develop and fulfill it’s self-actualization, and also function to make the existing gluten extra stretchy and retain gas from the yeast as the bread rises and bakes.

INTERCHANGEABLE?
Maybe, but maybe not. Use bread flour or all purpose flour for bread, don’t use cake flour.
Use cake flour or all purpose flour for cakes, don’t use bread flour. If a recipe calls for one cup of cake flour, you can sub ¾ cup sifted bleached all purpose flour and two tablespoons of cornstarch.

I is...

unemployed as of Monday.

Any advice or job leads are welcome.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.



(I'm not too upset, planning on going to the gym, sleeping in, reading for about a week until I start freaking out.)

I am a newly hydrated sea monkey

Last night I came home from work to find my two roommates drinking beer and watching Arrested Development on the couch. I opened a bottle of wine and plopped down to join them. Played with the cat.

Astro-man (see below, and I found out he is 40, so I am loathe to call him Astro-boy) came over a little later, I made tea and he went over my chart.

He's a weird one, him. Can't quite put my finger on it. Either he's read The Game or he's just very direct or maybe he's...ok, I kinda maybe think he's pretty kinky. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I suppose...but weird.

And cuter than I remembered him. And he does a lot of yoga.

Support to troops.

If you go to the Generation Kill website, click Troop Drive on the top right corner.

Basically, there is a list of items that soldiers have requested. You pick one, fill out a form with your email address, and HBO will send that item - no cost to you. The catch is that they only send 1 item per email address but if (like me) you've got more than one you can keep entering.

The drive continues until August 24, so PLEASE spread the word.

Do me a favor and leave me a note if you go ahead and do this, just so I know...thanks!

You can read me anything

OK, slightly obsessed with the Magnetic Fields, so here's a (going to be daily?) dose.

The stars say...

I met a fella about a week ago. He was a friend of a friend, she introduced him and mentioned that he was very interested in astrology.

"Astronomy?" I asked him. "I used to have a telescope when I was a kid..."

"No, astrology."

OK. Long story short, he offered to do an astrology chart for me. I emailed him my birthdate, place, and time, and a week later, he sent me a chart...not that I can understand much of it, or of what he said about it:

attaching your chart for 7am, no daylight savings. given your ascendant is close to middle of Aries, it will remain in Aries throughout approximately 6am-8am. So good chance your ascendant is Aries. It is an interesting chart. Ketu (one of moon nodes) resides in your ascendant. Lord of your ascendant is in 11'th house which is house of gain, friends and improvement. It is good house for Mars. Youhave 3 planets in 12'th house. The 12'th is house of seclusion, expenditure. Your Venus is exalted in the 12th house. Interestinglyyou have 5 out of 9 planets which are vargottama (best division). It is pretty rare and usually considered very favorable.

So that's fine. It's a bunch of blah blah blah to me, because I haven't the faintest what it means, but it's fine, right?

Then I get to the follow up:

by the way there is some indication that you are bit oversexed. I'm curious if you think this is true. Probably most of us are so it might be hard question to answer. Your venus rules the 7'th house of partners and resides in 12'th house of pleasures and expenditures. It is also exalted in the 12th house (Pisces) so if this is the case then it would probably manifest positively

Ummm, internets? How do you respond to something like this from an almost stranger? Am I being a prude thinking this is a little weird for someone to bring up?

man and cat chilling

I was recently looking through some pictures from my trip to Japan with A. Here's a picture she took, titled Man and Cat Chilling. Makes me think of other man and cat pairings. (Incidentally, I now live with a cat. His name is Mystery Cat, and he's quite pleasant, although he does tend to nip quite hard in pleasure as he is having his belly scratched.)

When I was in college, there were a series of infamous "Russian parties". Usually hosted by my friend Bratik, they included whatever cheap wine and other booze we could round up, lots of cigarette smoking, and at least one dude with a guitar.

My friend Vanya was one of those dudes with a guitar, and perenial favorites of ours were songs by a Russian rock band called Ноль (Zero). One of my favorites was called Chelovek i Koshka (Man/Person and Cat)

this is what goes on...

when you stick a bunch of semi-intellegent people in a room together for 12 hours a day and have them do somewhat mindless, very repetative work: mymiserablecoworker.tumblr.com/