Whole wheat flour is actually any flour milled from the whole grain, be it hard wheat, soft wheat, or durum wheat, BUT, it is generally accepted that commercial "whole wheat" flour is milled from hard wheat, which is best used for bread.

Whole wheat pastry flour is milled from soft wheat, which has a lower amount of gluten (protein) in it, which makes it best used for foods like quick breads, pastry, cakes and some cookies where you don't want a lot of gluten development.

Hard wheat and soft wheat contain both of the proteins in the "gluten group" - glutenins and gliadins - but the dominant protein, glutenins, provide elasticity for that lofty loaf of bread, and less of the protein for soft wheat. All-purpose flour is a mixture of hard and soft wheat flour.

For pasta, the optimum wheat type to use is durum, which has the highest amount of protein of all the types of wheat, but the dominate protein from the gluten group in durum wheat are gliadins, which play an important contribution to the viscosity and extensibility, and is best used for pasta/noodles, not bread.

Semolina flour, which is used for pasta, is a coarse flour milled from durum wheat with the bran and germ removed. I mill a coarse grind of durum wheat to use as a substitute for semolina for making whole wheat pasta. For whole wheat noodles I mill durum wheat into flour.

You can make pasta using any type of flour, including whole wheat flour milled from hard wheat, pastry flour milled from soft wheat, but the best wheat to use for pasta is durum wheat. If you notice the ingredients on pasta nearly always says "semolina or durum flour".

I also make pasta from freshly-milled kamut, which is the ancient form of durum wheat, as well as triticale, which is a hybrid mix of rye and durum.

-Grainlady

Thanks, Grainlady. Here's my specific dilemma:

I'd like to try a Cook's Illustrated recipe which prefers "fresh Chinese egg noodles" but accepts regular spaghetti as an alternative. That got me wondering what's so special about "Chinese" egg noodles versus others, esp. considering the fact that CI has a published egg noodle recipe.

In the discussion of several various types of Chinese noodles, wikipedia includes:

"Lye-water or egg
These wheat flour noodles are more chewy in texture and yellow in colour either due to the addition of lye (sodium carbonate, potassium carbonate, calcium hydroxide, or potassium hydroxide) or egg."

And in doing a google search for recipes I came across one with these ingredients...

4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 teaspoons sea salt
4 Eggs
4 tablespoons unrefined olive oil
1/3 cup cold water
Arrowroot powder

...which seems to fit the bill. Hence my question about the Whole Wheat Pastry Flour.

[Maybe I should just use spaghetti? LOL]

Wow, that's throwing a curve ball... After a search on lye-kneaded wheat noodles, "A special flour blend called cake-and-pastry flour is used professionally to make stretch noodles because it has the right elasticity."

There's always an exception to the rule with food (LOL).

Arrowroot (or tapioca starch) is added to the noodles to change texture and tenderness.

The link below has more information that may be helpful and also contains the recipe and how-to.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Noodle Stretching

foodonastump - to answer your original question, no.

If you've ever seen those guys stretching noodles, it's pretty amazing.

grainlady gave you good information and an interesting link. But the problem is the definition of "pastry" flour, etc.

Hard red spring wheat from the northern states has the highest protein content. It may be up to 12-14 percent, or even higher, sometimes hitting 16 percent. King Arthur whole wheat flour for example, is made from hard red spring wheat at 14% protein.

Moving down the protein scale, next would come hard winter wheat, which has a slightly lower protein number than hard spring wheat, roughly 10 -12 percent. There isnt much difference between red and white wheat insofar as protein is concerned.

Further down the protein scale is soft wheat, white or red, which has a protein content of maybe 8 percent and sometimes even less, depending on the producer. Soft wheat is usually winter wheat, grown in the east and the south where the winters are not as harsh as they are in the northern plains.

Farthest down the protein scale, something like "cake" flour may be 6 Â 8% protein. In addition, itÂs almost always bleached, which further breaks down the protein. Queen Guinevere Cake Flour, made by King Arthur, has a protein content of 8%.

There's a great deal of overlap and you really just find out by experimenting.

I see whole wheat pastry flour listed in recipes from time to time, but have never found it for sale. Does one just have to memorize the above information when shopping, (and I'm always blown away by how knowledgeable Grainlady is), or are there bags of flour actually labeled whole wheat pastry flour?

Sally

Sally, yes, flour is marketed with the name "WW Pastry Flour". Here's a link to KA's and I know Bob's Red Mill also markets under a pastry flour label.

/tricia

Thanks for the information! That article on stretching noodles is very interesting; sounds like it maybe more than my patience could handle though.

But, those aren't egg noodles. So I'm going to try the recipe I originally found. At Whole Foods I found Arrowhead Mills' "Organic Pastry Flour" which says "Whole Grain" (is there a difference between whole grain and whole wheat?) made from soft wheat. I'll give it a shot. I figure the worst that can happen is it doesn't work well... and then I'll make some pastry instead!

foodonastump -

There are technical differences between whole grain (or wholegrain, or whole-grain) and whole wheat, in accordance with the laws that dictate such things, when you talk about commercial "whole wheat" flour and labeling. And to add to the confusion, there is also "whole wheat" flour called whole meal or unbolted flour, and graham flour. Most of these names have been used interchangeably for "whole wheat flour". For all practical purposes, because these commercial flours have a certain percentage of the whole grain in it, by law it can be called "whole wheat".

"The original "Definitions and Standards for Food Products" published by the Department of Agriculture specified Graham flour as "unbolted wheat meal" and further described meal as "the clean sound product made by grinding grain." This means nothing added and nothing taken away. Graham flour was also a coarse flour, instead of being milled into the superfine flour most flours are milled today. This definition would exclude the reconstituted whole wheat flour products by modern roller mill factories."

Bolted flour (or reduced bran flour) is whole wheat flour that has about 80% of its bran sifted off.

Some "whole wheat" flour is nothing more than white flour (bran and germ removed) with some of the bran raked back into it to make it "brown", which occasionally is directed by law to meet these standards, to give the flour longer shelf-life without refrigeration. The wheat germ oil quickly oxidizes once the grain is milled into flour and the oil goes rancid quickly. The bran is the "coat" that protects all of this from happening to grain. Once that bran is cracked/shattered, the oxidizing starts to degrade the oils and the nutrients in the grain within 3-hours of milling.

In some instances, commercial whole wheat flour is processed like white flour, with the bran and germ separated from the endosperm. Then bran, germ, and white flour are recombined according to some standard formula. This gives the flour consistent results in baking and flavor. This flour is NOT 100% whole wheat flour.

King Arthur and Hodgson Mills mill their whole wheat flours from the whole grain into 100% whole wheat flour, nothing removed and nothing added. This is also known as 100% extraction.

Then you can get into speciality flours like Irish Wholemeal Flour, which is a coarse grind of American whole wheat flour. It can often be milled from a soft wheat, or low-protein wheat, which is a traditional wheat variety used for making scones and quick breads, without as much gluten in it as in high-protein hard wheat flours. The endosperm can be milled into a fine flour, but the bran and germ milled into a coarse grind and the 3 recombined to certain specifications.

All commercial flours are milled from a combination of wheat with different protein levels to give it a standardized protein level. Within the same field you can have wheat that is 14-16% protein, and in an area where it gets run-off water and sits in too much rain water, or it gets a bit of shade from trees, it might be 8-9% protein. So the protein level is based on a mixture of wheat proteins.

-Grainlady

Arrowhead Mills is the whole wheat pastry flour I just bought. It is the only whole wheat flour I have seen in the common grocery stores around here that is specifically labeled "pastry flour" and indicates it is made from soft wheat. It has definately made a difference in my baking. I made scones with it last weekend and they were the best I have ever made with whole wheat flour. There may be other purveyors of whole wheat pastry flour, and it may be avialable in the natural foods store or co-op but I can't fit shopping there into my busy schedule at this time, since the natural foods store is only open 9-5 during the week and that's my work hours, plus Sat., which is the day I SHOULD go, but I'm usually too tired to shop on Sat. I shop mostly on my way home from work, in the early evenings. King Arthur has it and I'm sure other mail order sources, but now we're getting into cost. It is also double to triple the cost of AP flour, which makes it a difficult choice for me But I just may find it to be indespensible. Now let's hope the store keeps carrying it! So far Arrowhead Mills is the cheapest I have found. The best would be if I could buy in bulk, but a 5 lb. bag of flour will last me 6+ months.

Grainlady - Thanks again for all your info. I just skimmed it now but will come back to absorb more. (I find myself doing that with a lot of your posts, LOL.)

lpink - Glad you like the Arrowhead! I'm thinking if 5 pounds lasts you six months then you don't want bulk. Doesn't WW have the possibility of going rancid?

But if you do want bulk of any flour I recommend going to a bakery supply house. I spent $19 for 50# of a KA flour that KA sells online for $7+shipping - for just 3#. Slight difference.

Yeah, the joys of cooking alone. I store flour in the freezer, but my freezer is full up, considering I store almost everything in the freezer, soups, baked goods, butter, frozen fruits and veggies, fake meat, casseroles, bread, tortillas . . . Anything and everything takes me forever to use up so I end up storing extra in the freezer. About the only thing I don't freeze is salad. That's why I don't bake much, at the rate I eat things a cake lasts me two weeks, by which time no matter how good it was, it is like Chinese water torture eating it.

There may be a bakery store in the Lehigh Valley where I live, I will have to find it. I'll also bet I can get WW pastry flour at the health food store up the road or throught a co-op. I am just so darn busy. I'm likely to pick something up at the grocery store when I go shopping, but not very likely to run special trip errands.