Cake baking with Whole Wheat Flour

by Klara
(Budapest)

I prefer to bake using wholemeal flour. Is there a trick for replacing recipes with wholemeal when they call for plain, or is it ok just to go ahead and change it up? Is there anything I should consider?

Thanks for any help!


Klara-
I'm not sure what you mean by whole meal flour, but I'm assuming you mean whole wheat. For cake baking, you can substitute whole wheat for white flour one-to-one. However, you will get a heartier, whole grain taste in the cake. The advantage here is that whole wheat flour will not develop the chewy, tough gluten that white flour will, so you can't overmix a whole wheat cake.

If you were making bread, that would be just the opposite. Whole wheat needs to be mixed with a high-gluten flour to give a chewy texture in breads.

The fun of a cooking journey is to experiment, learn, and adjust. Go ahead and make that cake the way you want and tell me how it goes. Take notes and make changes for next time.

I hope I answered the question you intended.

Chef Todd.