Cake lour is not just

any old white powder

A fun take-home experiment
By Kevin McMullen, C. Rasmus, Melinda Virtue, Kate Slik and Colin Wrigley

the scientiic method, illustrating the need to vary only one ingredient at a time
Baking cakes with different recipes can provide an exercise in the application of

for correct derivation of conclusions. This experiment, most likely to be performed

at home, compares a cake lour with lours from durum wheat, rice and cornlour
(gluten-free starch). It leads into discussions about the chemistry of gas production
in baking, about the taxonomy (relatedness) of cereal-grain species and about
the nutritional aspects of baked goods, especially for people with wheat (gluten)
intolerance.

called ‘cornlour’ in the supermarket

INTRODUCTION
Wheat lour is used to make the many
food products listed in Figure 1. Pasta,
for example, is best made from lour
(semolina, a coarse lour) milled from
very hard durum wheat with a high
protein content (about 14%, mainly
gluten). On the other hand, low-protein
lour milled from soft wheat is favoured
for cake and biscuit manufacture.
For general home baking, the lour
available from the supermarket is suited
to cake making—rather low in protein
content (8% protein or so) and from soft
wheat thus having low starch damage.
Baker’s lour is indicated in Figure 1 to
require moderately high protein content
made from hard wheat; the consequent
starch damage means that more
water is needed to make a dough from
baker’s lour than for cake lour.
Flours made from other cereal grains,
such as rice, are not so well suited for
bread or cake baking because they
do not have the gluten protein that
is unique to wheat. The same goes
for cornlour, which is the starch part
of wheat lour with the gluten protein
removed by water washing (see
Wrigley, 2012). Although the product
is often made from wheat lour, it may
alternatively be the starch from corn
(maize). In the UK, the word ‘corn’ may
mean any grain.
Bread and cake are characterised by
their light luffy texture due to many air
holes (thus you might say that they are
‘wholesome’). For leavened bread,
the holes are made by carbon dioxide
(CO2) production from yeast. In contrast,
‘chemical leavening’ is used for cakes.
Self-raising lour is cake lour that includes
chemical raising agents, namely, some
form of ‘baking powder’. The most
common form of baking powder is a
combination of sodium bicarbonate
(‘bicarb’ or sodium hydrogen
carbonate, with the formula NaHCO3)
and ‘cream of tartar’ (a weak acid,
potassium hydrogen tartrate, with the
formula KHC4H4O6).
Potassium hydrogen tartrate

44 teachingscience
 Cake Flour Experiment

Figure 1: Wheat
quality-type
tailored to speciic
uses. Adapted
from Wrigley
(2009).

When this combination is mixed with HYPOTHESIS

water and heated, carbon dioxide
(CO2) is liberated according to the Cake lour (milled from low-protein
following equation: soft wheat lour) is better suited for
cake baking than are other lour types,
NaHCO3 + KHC4H4O6 especially lour from a non-wheat cereal.
KNaC4H4O6 + H2O + CO2

In this experiment, commercial baking STRATEGY

powder is suggested as the raising agent.
So how different in function are these
various types of lour for cake baking?
AIM
To determine the effectiveness of
different types of lour in cake baking.
The experimental strategy in Figure 2 is to
compare the suitability for cake making
of lours from common wheat, from
durum wheat, from rice and a gluten-
free lour. Only the lour type is altered.
All other ingredients and the method are
kept the same throughout. [That is how
an experiment should be conducted—

Different species Different genus

2. Durum 1. Wheat lour 3. Rice
semolina (Contol) lour
No gluten
protein

4. Cornlour
Figure 2: Design of cake-lour experiment

Volume 60 | Number 1 | March 2014 45

 altering only one factor at a time.]
However, to optimise the conditions, it
METHOD
may be necessary to adjust slightly the The baking method is based on the
amount of liquid added to the batter ‘basic plain cake’ (Anon, 1981, p. 144).
and the cooking time. For each lour type:
1. Grease baking pan and set oven to
MATERIALS 180°C.

According to the strategy of Figure 2, 2. Cream butter (100 grams), sugar (60
four lour samples are needed: grams) and vanilla (4 drops).

1. Plain lour of common wheat
2. Semolina from durum wheat
3. Rice lour
4. Cornlour, preferably from wheat
Other ingredients are baking powder,
sugar, eggs, milk, butter (or margarine)
and (optional) vanilla essence. A circular
baking pan of about 18 cm diameter is
suitable for the recipe below.
3. Add two eggs and beat (preferably
with an electric mixer).
4. With moderate beating, add lour
(500 mL volume, two metric cups,
including two metric teaspoons (10
mL) of baking powder) and milk
(100 mL), plus water as needed to
produce a semi-liquid batter.
5. Pour the batter into a baking pan
and place in the (pre-heated) oven.

1. CAKE FLOUR 2. DURUM 3. RICE FLOUR 4. CORNFLOUR

FROM WHEAT
QUALITY
ATTRIBUTE SEMOLINA
Crust colour 2.6 2.3 1.5 1.4
Height 2.6 2.1 2.3 0.9
Shape 2.4 1.2 2.4 0.5
Crumb texture 2.1 1.4 1.4 1.2
Taste 2.4 1.9 1.2 1.5
Mouth feel 2.8 1.5 1.5 1.4
Overall quality 2.6 1.7 1.4 1.3
The favourite(s) Best, as agreed
by all testers

Table 1a: Group A assessment of quality attributes for cakes made with the lour samples listed in Figure 2.
Each score is out of 3, the higher the better.

1. CAKE FLOUR 2. DURUM 3. RICE FLOUR 4. CORNFLOUR

FROM WHEAT
QUALITY
ATTRIBUTE SEMOLINA
Crust colour 46 creamy pale, 35 golden 50 golden 36 smooth, most
(judged on the not appealing appealing appealing appealing
patty cakes)
Height 62 47 59 44
Shape 56 44 57 36
Crumb texture 51
(‘messiness’)
67 55 77

Taste 68 57 70 46
Mouth feel 67 61 63 65
Overall quality 17 9 17 7
The favourite(s) Preferred Preferred

Table 1b: Group B assessment of quality attributes for cakes made with the lour samples listed in Figure 2.
Scores are the aggregates of scores from 15 pairs of students, the lower the better.

46 teachingscience
 Cake Flour Experiment

6. After 30 minutes or so, test Figure 3:

for completion of baking Cakes for
by inserting a skewer. Group B as
scored in
Remove cake when Table 2b.
the skewer comes out
clean, with no adhering
batter, thus providing
ideal baking conditions
for each part of the
experiment.

RESULTS
Inevitably, the taste testing
started with ingers in the
batters, resulting in assessments 1. Wheat lour
that relected the coarser
particle size distributions of the
durum semolina and the rice
lour:
1. Plain lour batter—‘smooth
and not sweet’.
2. Semolina batter—‘lumpy,
gritty and not sweet’.
3. Rice lour batter—‘gritty
and not sweet’.
4. Cornlour batter—‘smooth
and sweet’. 2. Semolina
All baked cakes were assessed
for the set of attributes listed in
Tables 1a and 1b, which show
some actual results obtained
by two distinct groups of
students. The diversity of these
two approaches to scoring
indicates that at this stage
of the experiment there is
opportunity for teacher and
students to decide on their
own particular approach to
evaluation. 3. Rice lour
For Group A (Table 1a),
three Year 9 students worked
together; assessments were
scaled from 1 (poorest) to
3 (best). Table 1a shows
averages for the whole class.
For the subjective attributes
(crumb texture, taste,
mouth feel), judgements
were largely based on the
students’ concepts of the
ideal. Apparently they did not
consider any of the cakes to 4. Cornlour
be perfect (no scores of 3.0).

Volume 60 | Number 1 | March 2014 47

 Additional comments were recorded
to justify the scores allocated. These
assessments were made an hour or
two after the cakes had come from
the oven. Additional assessments may
be warranted the next day to judge
keeping-quality.
For Group B (Table 1b), Year 9 and Year
11 students were in pairs; assessments
were scaled from 4 (poorest) to 1
(best). Examples of the four cakes are
shown in Figure 3. Scores in Table 1b
are aggregates of scores from 15 pairs
of students, the lowest score being
best. Many of the Group B assessments
differ from those of Group A (Table 1a),
despite the different scoring systems
used for each group. For example,
students did not ind the much greater
height and volume of Cake 1 (wheat
lour) to be appealing, and scaled it
down accordingly (although greater
volume is considered desirable in the
trade). This prejudice also extended
to the assessment of shape. Taste was
considered an important attribute
and the cornlour cake was given
best ranking for both taste and overall
desirability.
In a further set of experiments, the same
batters were baked as patty cakes
(see background in Figure 3), but in
this situation the differences between
the lours was not so marked as for the
full-size cakes. Apparent inconsistencies
(e.g. in crust colour) between the cakes
in Figure 3 and the scores of Table 1b are
explained by some judgements having
been made on the patty cakes.
DISCUSSION
Student assessments
The greatest height and volume were
obtained with Cake No 1 (evident in
Figure 3), because this is the lour type
designed for cake making (Figure 1).
Thus, results for the other cakes should
have been compared to it as the control
for all aspects of quality. The consequent
expectation that Cake 1 would be the
most desirable was not unanimous, as is
seen by the diversity of results in Tables
1a and 1b. In contrast to Cake 1, the
cornlour cake was ‘consistently poorest,
due to having no gluten protein at all’,
48 teachingscience
according to Group A. Nevertheless,
Group B indicated a preference for the
cornlour cake (No 4). Presumably any
freshly baked cake may be enjoyable
even if, for example, its rising is much less
than that of the control cake.
Many students may not have
experienced homemade cakes, thinking
that shop-bought cakes are the norm.
This background may explain why some
students in Group B stated that the plain
lour cake tasted like a scone. After
all, how many people eat plain cake?
Students may unfairly score a plain lour
cake as they are used to tasting cakes
with icing and/or cream, which would
have a moistening effect on the cake.
Accordingly, an avenue for further
investigation would be for the cakes to
be iced prior to evaluation.
The attribute of ‘crumb texture’ (Table
1) refers in the trade to the ineness of
the bubble structure for the cut cake,
but the students preferred to use it
to indicate the extent that the cake
structure crumbled easily. Such matters
can form the basis of useful discussion.
Students should also discuss how they
would weight the various attributes.
Gluten and gas bubbles
The most dramatic result was the lat
cake (looking like a pancake) obtained
for the cornlour cake (Figure 3), as it
has no gluten-protein matrix to help
retain the gas bubbles. Gluten is the
protein complex (unique to wheat) that
is needed to give dough its coherence,
elasticity and ability to hold gas bubbles
(CO2) produced from either yeast or
baking powder. However, all the cakes
had eggs in the batter and the protein
(albumin) of the egg white would
provide a basis for trapping the gas
bubbles and then forming a stable
matrix on heating, in the way that the
white of an egg goes semi-solid in a
boiled egg.
The quality of the cake (No 2) made
from durum semolina might be
expected to be similar to the control
(No 1) because they both contain
gluten protein, as distinct from the
corn and rice lours. Durum wheat is a
close relative of common wheat, but
it is a distinct species (Table 2). Durum
 Cake Flour Experiment

semolina (coarse lour) contains more

gluten of greater strength, compared
to cake lour (Figure 1). However, the
strong gluten of the durum lour may
mean that gas bubbles are squeezed
and prevented from expanding as they
do during heating in the batter made
from cake lour. The coarseness of durum
semolina may cause water to be taken
up more slowly than by the ine particles
of cake lour, providing another reason
for Cake 2 to differ from Cake 1.
A student experiment about washing
gluten from a wheat lour dough has
recently been published in Teaching
Science (Wrigley, 2012).

Gluten-free baking
On the other hand, the poorer rising-
quality of Cakes 3 and 4 (Figure 3), with
no gluten present, illustrates the critical
function of gluten in baking. Without
the cohesion of gluten in the batter, gas
bubbles are not retained during baking.
The rice lour has a protein content of
about 7%, but this rice protein does
not function as effectively in retaining
gas bubbles as the wheat gluten does.
Nevertheless, the presence of the egg
protein makes up for the absence of
gluten to a limited extent.
The story of Cakes 3 and 4 relates to
the need of gluten-free food of people
with dietary intolerance to wheat
gluten. Rising-quality is poorer without
the presence of gluten to provide good
dough quality. The best-characterised
form of wheat intolerance is coeliac
disease, a condition with no cure other
COMMON NAME BOTANICAL NAME
(GENUS AND SPECIES)
than a lifetime gluten-free diet (Wieser,
2004; Di Sabatino and Corazza, 2009) Wheat (common) Triticum aestivum
[‘celiac’ in US spelling]. Cakes 3 and 4 Wheat (durum) Triticum durum
would be suitable for coeliacs, as the
Triticale xTriticosecale sp.
rice lour and cornlour have no gluten
protein. However, other ingredients (e.g. Rye
plant gums) are available to substitute
Secale cereale
Barley Hordeum vulgare
for gluten to improve the quality of
gluten-free baked goods. Oats Avena sativa
Maize (corn) Zea mays
Taxonomy of the cereal grains
Sorghum Sorghum bicolor
Many other cereal grains are gluten-
free, for dietary purposes, such as corn Rice Oryza sativa
(maize) and sorghum. The ‘big three’
are wheat, rice and corn (Table 2); Table 2. Cereal grain species
over 600 million tonnes of each are (approximately) in order of
produced annually. That equals almost relatedness to common wheat.
one kilogram of grain per person per

Volume 60 | Number 1 | March 2014 49

 day for the world’s population (Wrigley,
2009). However, production sites are
far from regions of human need and
considerable amounts of grain are used
for industrial processing and animal
production.
More closely related to wheat are
triticale, rye, barley and possibly oats
(Table 2). For dietary purposes, these four
cereals are deemed to contain ‘gluten’
(as deined for dietary purposes and thus
prohibited for coeliacs) but their gluten
protein is inadequate for normal bread
making.
Further variations of this experiment
would be to test the cakemaking quality
of lour from some of these other cereal
grains. This approach could open up the
fascinating science of taxonomy—the
study of relatedness between organisms,
based on morphological and molecular
similarities (Morrison & Wrigley, 2004).
The chemistry of cake-raising
Self-raising lour might have been used
as the ideal lour for cake baking, as it
has ‘built-in’ raising agents, but it was
necessary to provide baking powder to
all cakes as a uniform raising agent to
permit direct comparison among the
different lours.
As explained in the introduction, cakes
are chemically leavened, as distinct
from yeast-leavened bread. Further
variations of this experiment would be
to explore the range of ways in which
CO2 can be generated to cause the
‘raising’ (rising) of the cake batter
to form the ixed foam of the baked
cake. The example in the introduction
emphasises the acid-base interaction of
bicarbonate and potassium hydrogen
tartrate. However, bicarbonate alone is
capable of producing CO2 with heating.
So…can a good cake be produced with
bicarbonate only, without tartrate?
If self-raising lour is used for cake
making, there is no need to worry
about adding a baking powder of
any composition. But if you read (and
decipher) the raising ingredients on the
packet of self-raising lour, these raising
agents may be found to differ from the
composition of conventional baking
powder. How do these commercial
combinations work? Can you duplicate
50 teachingscience
the composition by combining the
components ‘from scratch’?
Warning
If you plan to eat any experimental
cakes, ensure that food-quality
ingredients are used!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Students and staff of our schools are
acknowledged for their contributions. In
addition, Bethany Ferguson (a student
at Cherrybrook Technology High School,
Sydney) is acknowledged for aspects of
the original concept of the experiment.
REFERENCES
Anon (1981). The Commonsense Cookery Book, Metric
Edition. Compiled by the N.S.W. Public School Cookery
Teachers’ Association. Angus & Robertson Publishers.
Pages 144–145.
Di Sabatino, A., Corazza, G. R. (April 2009). “Coeliac
disease”. Lancet 373 (9673): 1480–93.
Morrison, L.A. & Wrigley, C.W. (2004). Taxonomic
classiication of grain species. Encyclopedia of Grain
Science. Vol. 3, 271–280. C. Wrigley, C. Walker and H.
Corke, eds. Elsevier Ltd, Oxford, UK.
Wieser, H., (2004). Celiac disease. In: Encyclopedia of
Grain Science. Vol. 1, 179–187. C. Wrigley, C. Walker
and H. Corke, eds. Elsevier Ltd, Oxford, UK.
Wrigley, C. W. (2009). Wheat: a unique grain for the
world. Chapter 1 in Wheat: Chemistry and Technology,
Fourth Edition. K. Khan and P. R. Shewry, Eds. AACC
International, MN, USA. Pages 1–17.
Wrigley, C.W. (2012). Proteins – the basis of life.
Teaching Science 58 (2), 56–59.
Kevin McMullen has taught Science since
1980 and has been at Rutherford Technology
High School since 1985. His teaching includes
understanding the impact of science in our
everyday lives.
C. Rasmus enjoys her position as a science
teacher at Rutherford Technology High School.
She especially appreciated the opportunity to
stimulate the students with the cakes experiment.
Melinda Virtue has been a science teacher at
Stella Maris for 7 years. After gaining her honours
science degree in ethology, she worked in various
research laboratories. Her subsequent teaching
career included many years at an international
school in Germany.
Kate Slik has been an integral part of the science
department at Stella Maris for several years.
Dr Colin Wrigley, AM, has been involved in CSIRO
research for over ifty years. In recent years, he
has participated in CSIRO’s Scientists in Schools
program.