If you have just one type of flour in your pantry, chances are it’s all-purpose. “For a classic pie dough, nothing beats all-purpose flour,” Erin Jeanne McDowell wrote in “The Book on Pie.” Even so, it can be bleached or unbleached, and the protein content can vary among brands even within one category. Other types include cake, pastry, bread and whole-wheat flours, to name just a few.
For the most part, there isn’t much of a difference in the final pie product whether you use bleached or unbleached flour, McDowell wrote. Different flours absorb moisture differently, but the biggest factor in your decision is a flour’s ability to form gluten, which typically correlates with its protein content.
“Flour high in protein requires more water and forms gluten more readily, which makes the dough made from it stretchy and hard to roll thin, resulting in a chewy or tough crust,” Rose Levy Beranbaum wrote in “The Pie and Pastry Bible.” “Flour low in protein, such as cake flour, will usually produce a dough that is so tender it tears when it is transferred to the pie pan and develops cracks during baking.” As such, her preference is for pastry flour, which has a protein content between all-purpose and cake flours. (An instant flour, such as Wondra, behaves similarly.)
Pastry chef Camari Mick of Raf’s and Musket Room, both in New York City, uses a combination of approximately 80 percent all-purpose and 20 percent whole-wheat flours. “I do that because I like to see a little bit of color in all of my doughs,” she said, and she also enjoys that it gives “a little bit more robust flavor, too.” While whole-wheat flour is typically higher in protein than all-purpose, its structure inhibits its gluten-forming ability, so you want to keep the ratio low. “You don’t want to mess with the gluten development.”
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