On Food and Cooking

responsiveness to pressure that persists even
after the kneader lets go. It’s these qualities of
cohesiveness and liveliness that set wheat
doughs apart from other cereal doughs, and
that make possible light, delicate loaves of
bread, flaky pastries, and silken pastas.
The various textures of baked goods and
pastas are created by the structures of their
doughs and batters. Those structures are
composed of three basic elements: water, the
flour’s gluten proteins, and its starch granules.
Together, these elements create an integrated,
cohesive mass. That cohesiveness is what
gives pasta its close-textured silkenness. It’s
also what makes bread doughs, pastry doughs,
and cake batters divisible into
microscopically thin but intact sheets. Breads
and cakes are light and tender because the
protein-starch mass is divided up by millions
of tiny bubbles; pastries are flaky and tender
because the protein-starch mass is interrupted
by hundreds of thin layers of fat.