Swans Down Cake Flour

I've a new dessert recipe to try and it calls for cake flour. I've never used this stuff and had no idea what the big deal was between it and regular all-purpose flour.

Fortunately, you can use cake flour in place of all-purpose flour by adding two tablespoons of cake flour to every cup called for in a recipe. At least what I have left after the recipe won't go to waste.


Like regular flour, cake flour is loaded with carbs.


I'm still not sure how this is different from regular flour. Unfortunately I don't have a bag of flour with an ingredient statement to compare.


After opening up the box and measuring the amount I needed for my recipe, I was quite surprised by how exceptionally fine this flour is. I mean, it's very much like starch it's so fine.
 

Looking up flour in my old copy of Larousse Gastronomique, I was disappointed to find there was no specifics regarding cake flour. The only information available about different flours is:

Flours of different properties are required for different commercial baked products. Bread flour is of high protein content with good gluten strength and high water-holding capacity. Biscuit flours are mainly produced from soft wheats with low protein content and weak glutens. Wholemeal flour is made from the whole wheat; it is becoming increasingly popular with trends towards high-fibre diets.

According to Wikipedia, cake flour has a high starch-to-gluten ratio and is made from fine-textured, soft, low-protein wheat which is highly bleached. Yeah, so I guess cake flour is the same as biscuit flour.

Get this, Wiki also gives options for cake flour substitution:

However, if cake flour is called for, a substitute can be made by replacing a small percentage of all-purpose flour with cornstarch or removing two tablespoons from each cup of all-purpose flour.^[3][4][5]

Swans Down Cake Flour, 2 pound boxes available in the flour section of the Ralph's baking aisle $3.49. 

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