I have several canisters of flour. I know some are bread flour and some are regular flour, but I did not label them and have forgotten which is which. Is there some way that I can "test" to find out which is which? I don't think my cake would turn out if I used bread flour….

 We often try to think of ways to make these articles humorous, but in this case, of course, you've done the work for us. We asked the wise bakers at King Arthur Flour what they do when someone forgets to label 40 or 50 tons of freshly milled flour. Needless to say, they indicated in the strongest language Vermonters can muster that they have never faced such a problem.

But they do have a solution for you. "Take the flours and carefully measure one cup of each into separate bowls. Add 1/4 cup of water to each bowl and blend. The stiffer dough is the bread flour. The next less-stiff dough is all-purpose flour. And pastry and cake flours make a soft paste, with the cake flour being a bleached white color."

We will rely on you to come up with a fail-safe system to keep batches of dough distinct as you perform this test, so you that you remember which dough came from which canister.

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