What type of flour should I use for crepes? What are the differences? I want to cook both sweet and savory, but not American style pancakes, just French thin ones.
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2 Answers
In my experience, whatever wheat flour (aside from super grainy wheat meals) you use with crepes should be fine. The primary difference between bread flour, AP flour, and pastry/cake flour is the amount of protein, which in dough, will drastically affect the elasticity of it. More of the proteins glutenin and gliadin will form more gluten, which makes the dough much chewier. The water and fat content in crepe batters is too high for a whole lot of gluten do develop, so while there might be some very minor differences in texture, anything should work.
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"Too much water for the gluten to develop " - could you explain this, please? And not all batters for thin pancakes contain extra fat.– Stephie ♦Commented Jul 24, 2017 at 4:16
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@Stephie: For gluten do develop fully, there needs to be a certain concentration of glutenin and gliadin, water, and kneading (or something similar.) Thin pancake batters have enough liquid that the concentration of those proteins is pretty limited, and kneading is near impossible. The balance of protein is pretty sensitive: replacing 15% of your all purpose flour with corn starch will make a pretty significant difference in the amount of gluten that develops. Traditional crepes do have melted butter, and fat also retards the formation of long gluten strands.– ChefAndyCommented Jul 24, 2017 at 14:21
Find a recipe and follow it.
The serious eats recipe uses all purpose flour (which is the default when someone says "flour" in the US), as does Pepin's New Complete Techniques (Crepes Suzettes, p.545) and Essential Pepin. Pepin's application is sweet, Serious Eats' is savory.
