On Food and Cooking

and tough, or soft and mushy.
Batters include some kind of flour, a liquid
that might be water, milk, or beer, sometimes
a chemical leavening to provide gas bubbles
and lightness, and often eggs, whose proteins
promote adherence to the food and allow the
use of less flour. Of all the ingredients, the
flour has the largest influence on batter
quality. Too much can produce a tough,
bready coating; too little and it will be fragile.
The gluten proteins in ordinary wheat flour
are valuable for the clinginess they provide,
but they form elastic gluten and absorb both
moisture and fat, and so are responsible for
both chewiness and oiliness in the fried crust.
For these reasons, moderate-protein flours
make better batters than bread flour, and some
batters are made from other grains, or from a
mixture of wheat flour and other flours or
starches. Rice proteins don’t form gluten and
absorb less moisture and fat, so batters that
contain a substantial proportion of rice flour