Random flour experiments

I haven't been cooking as much lately as I'd like, but over the weekend I learned an important lesson: Flour matters!!! I made two different things, both which called for all purpose flour, and having run out I substituted it with Bread Machine flour...turns out, they don't produce the same results at all!

First I made a quiche, which turned out quite nice ~ delicious, even ~ except I wasn't wild about the crust. I'm pretty sure I did everything right as far as making it - I used very cold butter and ice water, didn't over process, minimal rolling, etc., but I believe that using the wrong kind of flour affected its overall quality.

It looks good...

see...

but the crust turned out less flaky and more thin and crisp than I would like...if I had any doubt as to whether or not the flour was the culprit here, my experiment with shortbread confirmed it!

The only variation I made in the recipe I found for Chocolate Espresso Shortbread on the Vanilla Garlic blog was that, again, I used bread flour instead of all purpose and the results were, well....disappointing may be an understatement.

The BF was very nice about it and even went so far as to say he would eat them, and our dinner guest obligingly downed a couple of them herself, but I didn't like them very much at all - they turned out very thin and crisp (texture-wise, not unlike the pie crust, come to think of it) - definitely NOT what I expected!

I couldn't even bring myself to photograph them, which is very rare - I snap pics of pretty much everything I cook. I will make these again because the flavor combination is lovely and I can see how, when properly made, they'd be wonderful with a nice coffee...I'll report back once I do...