sally2 & lpinkmountain - sally2 - We've been doing a little traveling and it's the beginning of gardening season, so I haven't been spending much time on the computer. I should have added, if you mill your own flour, be sure to sift out any large chunks of bran from your flour when using it for fine cakes, like chiffon or angel food. And you must have a mill that will mill a very fine flour to use it for "cake" flour. A coarse grind of flour won't get the job done. I agree about avoiding bleached flour, but saying that, I brought home my 1 bag-for-the-year of White Lily flour I always purchase when we go to Tennessee (LOL). lpinkmountain - I've never tried wholegrain cake flour with barley flour, but I'm going to bet it's sweet taste would be an asset. Barley does have some gluten, although it's very low in gluten. Barley flour is an odd flour when you mill it yourself. It's really light and airy. You can mill 3/4 c. barley and it will innitially measure 1-1/2 c. of flour, but after several days storage, it compresses to 1 c. of flour. Barley is the exception to the "stir before measuring" rule. You need to tap the container a few times to settle the contents before measuring. I like to mill pearled barley into flour and use it in baked goods. Pearled barley has the bran removed so the flour is very starchy and soft to the touch. If you use barley in a yeast bread the crusts tend to harden after the bread is cooled and the crumb of the bread may be more crumbly, but nice and moist. Barley flour works well in lots of baking. It's one of those under-used flours, like rye. People only think of barley as a flour for a flatbread and there are LOTS of recipes using it for bannocks, pancakes (and other quick breads), pie crust... -Grainlady

The reason to add the flour... There is less gluten in cake flour than in all-purpose flour. Gluten absorbs moisture, so you need to add a little cake flour to compensate or your batter will be too wet. -Grainlady

For the small amount of cake flour called for in this recipe, it probably won't make much difference and I wouldn't worry about it or alter the amount (more about that below). If you keep one of the Southern All-Purpose flours around for making biscuits and quick breads (White Lily, Martha White, Gladiola or Red Band which have 7.5-9.5% protein) it would make an excellent substitute (cup for cup) because it has close to the same amount of protein as cake flour (7.5-8.5%). People who make lots of quick breads and cake would get better results if they DID use a Southern All-Purpose flour instead of National Brands and Northern Brands of all-purpose flour which have more gluten/protein in them. Southern All-Purpose flours have less gluten than Northern All-purpose (Robin Hood, Hecker's and King Arthur 11-13%) and National Brands of All-purpose flour (Gold Medal & Pillsbury 10-12%). It's all about the gluten development... The more gluten there is to develop in the flour, the tougher the cake will be. But once again, there's not enough cake flour in the recipe to worry about. Hendricus gave the #1 advise when substituting all-purpose flour for cake flour - less mixing. The more you mix, the more the gluten develops into long strands. The more gluten you develop during mixing the harder it is for the leavening gases to escape. They literally have to "drill" their way through the long gluten strands. The leavening gases leave narrow holes that run from the bottom to the top of the cake (or quick bread). Tunnels are the hallmark of overmixing and over-developing the gluten. There's not enough cake flour involved in the recipe to alter the amount of the flour. The reason for reducing the amount of all-purpose flour when you use it instead of cake flour is because gluten absorbs a lot of hydration and the cake can be drier because of the added gluten found in all-purpose flour. A reduction of the amount of all-purpose when substituting it for cake flour will reduce the total amount of gluten -- a little. There's a third way to reduce gluten - add more fat. Fat coats the gluten so that it doesn't have as much contact with the hydration, so it only develops into short strands. This is a common method used when people want a more tender pastry crust and are using one of the higher-gluten (higher protein content) Northern all-purpose flours. After the flour lesson, I wouldn't worry about using all-purpose instead of cake flour. -Grainlady

The wheat family saga, and why all-purpose flour isn't the "right" flour for all-purposes..... REALLY, it's NOT! The following is in part from classes I teach on grains and home milling. -Grainlady ***The bottom line....you can make pasta and noodles with any kind of flour (including non-wheat varieties, low-gluten, and gluten-free varieties, bean flours, etc., but not all wheat flours are the optimum choice for making pasta and noodles. There are 6 wheat varieties (both red wheat and white wheat, hard and soft, as well as spring and winter wheat). Each variety has different characteristics when considering the type of food you want to make. There are varieties that have bread-making characteristics - "strong" wheat, or hard wheat. Wheat with a high protein (gluten) content. (t. aestivum) There are wheat varieties that have characteristics best used when you don't want/need a lot of gluten formation - "weak" wheat, or soft wheat. (t. aestivum, t. compactum) As a quick note, up until the 1880's, the only type of wheat that was readily available in the U.S. for making flour was soft wheat. Bread making was a completely different process than what we use today because of the type of wheat grown throughout the United States. There weren't tall lofty loaves like we get today. If you can find some of the heritage wheat varieties, they are also best used with the long, slow, bread making processes from the early 1800's. What about "gluten"? The protein group we refer to as "gluten" is predominantly glutenins and gliadins. For both hard and soft wheat the dominant protein is glutenin. All-purpose flour is a mixture of hard and soft wheat, making it strong enough to make yeast bread, weak enough for most cakes, cookies, quick breads, pastry, but it's not the optimal choice for anything, except maybe soft dinner rolls. Cake flour is milled from soft wheat. Enter the 6th variety of wheat - durum (t. durum) - the best choice for pasta and noodles. Durum wheat came to the United States from south Russia in the late 19th century, as did the hard red winter wheat varieties that are the granddaddy to today's bread flour. Durum represents only 5% of the wheat crop in the U.S. It is the hardest of all U.S. wheats with a high protein content, but unlike hard wheat (which also has a high protein content), the dominant protein of the protein group in durum wheat is gliadin, which makes it the best wheat variety for pasta and noodles. Durum comes in three subclasses which are according to the color. Hard amber durum, amber durum, and durum. Hard amber durum contains sufficient glutenins to make good bread and produce tall, slightly yellow loaves. Another characteristic of bread made with hard amber durum, the baked loaves keep better. Durum flour also improves the texture of bread made with hard wheat flour. As an aside, I've never been able to find/purchase hard amber durum, just amber durum and durum wheat, and I milled my own flour for pasta and noodles from durum wheat. "Durum - from the Latin word for hard - is an appropriate name for the firmest of all wheats. Durum's hardness makes it the wheat of choice for producing pasta. When most wheats are milled, the endosperm, or heart of the wheat kernel, breaks down into a fine, powdery flour, but the endosperm of durum is hard enough to hold together. The result is a granular product called semolina. Durum kernels are amber-colored and larger than those of other wheat classes. Also unique to durum is the fact that its endosperm is not creamy white, but yellow, which gives pasta its pleasing yellow hue." The better the durum, the better the pasta. When regular wheat flour is mixed with durum flour for making pasta, it's considered an inferior product in the industry. You can mill durum fine to coarse. Semolina is milled from the endosperm of durum wheat (the bran and germ are removed), while whole wheat pasta is milled from whole durum grain with the bran and germ, as well as the endosperm. When making pasta (for extruding), use a coarse grind. When making noodles (flat and cut), choose a fine grind. The ancient version of durum wheat is Kamut, and it is also a good choice for making pasta and noodles. -Grainlady