all-purpose flour

All-purpose flour, the milled endosperm of Triticum aestivum, goes into four recipes, each asking something different of it. In the Japanese curry, 30 g is whisked into melted butter and stirred until it turns the colour of peanut butter, a 15-minute step, then tempered with hot broth. The Gazan sayadiya mixes 35 g with 8 g of cornflour, seasoned with paprika, pepper and salt, to coat the mullet before frying. The egg-free brownies take 65 g with the cocoa, salt and baking powder, mixed until just combined. The protein oat waffles whisk 60 g together with oat flour and whey.

The Journal's note on gluten has a correction for anyone who bakes: the flour in the bag contains no gluten at all. It holds two families of storage protein, gliadins and glutenins, and gluten is what they become once water reaches them and something moves them around. Glutenins, from 500,000 to more than 10,000,000 daltons, supply structure; gliadins, 28,000 to 55,000, supply flow. Kneading takes apart more than it builds. In a 2021 study, going from three minutes of mixing to five cut the glutenin macropolymer by 20.20 per cent, and rest brought it back, peaking at 60 minutes. The note adds that this shows rest recovering a network that mixing broke, not that a rest-only method reaches the same endpoint.

The Journal's note on Japanese curry covers the roux. Krasnow, Hirson and Shoemaker cooked roux from three wheat flours and from cornstarch to six temperatures in 2011, and only the wheat-flour roux browned, placing the colour in the Maillard reaction between the flour's protein and its sugars. Thickening power rose with gentle heating, then fell sharply as the roux darkened.