what type of flour is used--bleached or unbleached all-purpose?

unbleached would brown faster.

Rose Levy Beranbaum
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Bien Cuit Shortbread
Recipe question for: Bien Cuit Shortbread

5 Comments

Smaug May 30, 2019
So I tried one experiment to confirm this (a dough of 40g flour, 15g. salted butter, 1 1/4tsp. water, rolled to 5/32" and baked at 375 for 35 min., one with King Arthur AP flour (11.7%) and one with Gold Medal bleached AP)- the King Arthur sample appeared slightly browner, but I guess it's not inconceivable that I switched my labels somewhere along the way. I want to try some more tests, and probably will someday- it's a bit past baking season for me- but I wondered if anyone had any experience of side by side trials that would indicate how this effects finished products.
 
Smaug May 25, 2019
Apparently no one knows- bleached would seem to be the choice as far as shortness, but I'm curious as to why it would brown faster.
 
Rose L. May 25, 2019
bleaching destroys some of the protein which causes browning.
 
Smaug May 26, 2019
Cool, thanks. But syntactically ambiguous- comma between "protein" and "which", I assume?
 
Rose L. May 26, 2019
You are 100% correct.
 
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