Cake Flour Baking Guide: Simple Cake Flour Substitute

Cake flour is made from a soft wheat and ground to an incredibly fine texture. It’s milled from varieties of wheat with lower protein content (and thus, less gluten) than all-purpose flour, resulting in a lighter, loosely-structured crumb. If a recipe calls for cake flour but you don’t have any on hand, you can produce a DIY substitute with all-purpose flour and cornstarch.

Cake flour is useful for baked goods with a tender texture, such as brownies, layer cakes, cupcakes, scones, and quick breads. You can also use cake flour to make pastries or desserts that are light and fluffy. For heartier baked goods, skip the cake flour and use a more substantial type of flour with a higher protein content.

If your recipe calls for cake flour and you don't have any on hand, you can mimic the effects of cake flour with all-purpose flour. When substituting a cup of all-purpose flour for a cup of cake flour, remove two tablespoons of AP flour and replace it with two tablespoons of cornstarch, which will prevent the formation of gluten to similar effect.

You can also use pastry flour as a cake flour substitute. Pastry flour contains only slightly more gluten than cake flour (its protein content is seven to nine percent, compared to cake flour's six percent), so you can swap these low-protein flours one-to-one. Since different types of flour have different particle sizes, using a kitchen scale rather than a measuring cup will give you the most accurate results.

Bread flour is a type of hard wheat flour with high protein (up to 12 percent) relative to starch. A higher protein content means more gluten formation and stronger breads. Soft wheat, often labeled “cake flour” (six percent protein) or “pastry flour” (seven to nine percent protein), includes less gluten, yielding a more delicate result. The ubiquitous all-purpose flour? It’s a blend of both—though it tends to be on the harder side, at least in the U.S., with around 10 percent protein.