Pastry Flour

A soft-wheat flour with a fine-texture and a high starch content. Pastry flour is finely ground, but it is not as fine as cake flour. It is available in bleached and unbleached varieties and is most often used for making flaky piecrusts, cookies, biscuits, and assorted pastries. It is not suitable for bread making because the gluten content is too low.

If pastry flour is unavailable, substitute equal parts all-purpose flour and cake flour. Another alternative is to use 2 tablespoons of cornstarch for every 7/8 cup of all-purpose flour required for the recipe. It is important to remember that when substituting all-purpose flour for pastry flour, the resulting baked item may be a bit tougher than when using only pastry flour because of the higher gluten content of the all-purpose flour.