Experimenting with Optima Flour

I finally laid my hands on a pack of this Optima flour. Its a flour with all the industrial use leveners, emulsifiers, chemicals etc in it. And it was labelled as the legendary NO FAIL Sponge cake mix. 

It contains everything... even sugar... so there's no need to even add sugar. 

What we need to do is... add eggs, water, and oil. I followed the swiss roll from AuntyYochana's blogsite... where she has famous swiss rolls made to perfection. I have never stopped exploring how to achieve the soft and fluffy texture of the Polar Sugar (Swiss) Roll...After doing loads of research long ago and never been able to confirm my hypothesis, I decided to try it out.

Opened and the flour is white and sparkly... I guess its from the sugar crystals? And I smelled it... it smells kinda weird... like baking soda and a little plasticky?? Other than that it looks OK.

Directions were to add eggs and water to the flour mixture, with yochana's recipe, a teaspoon of ovalett is required, so I put as per recipe. Then, whisk the mixture until its white and thick... and then add in the oil and vanilla essence and bake it... for the swiss roll, I'm doing it at 200 deg for about 11mins. 

That's the resultant sponge sheet. Not expecting it to be that super fragile, I tried flipping it over onto a sugared baking paper, and it crumbles into pieces. I fixed it and decided to make another one. I made 1/3 batch of buttercream and used it for 2 rolls.

My knife wasn't that good so I didn't manage to do such a clean cut...and I didn't put as much sugar cos scared too sweet... I took a bite and chewed... instantly... POLAR SUGAR ROLL appears right in my mind. That is it. Mystery solved. That is EXACTLY what the sugar rolls taste and feels like. Its nothing like what we can do at home with the natural ingredients without putting in all these chemical agents. The flour was crazy priced at $5 a pack (compared to $2.25 normal flour). As I eat and enjoy the wonderful texture, I can't help but picturing how much chemical goes into this...and other pastries in the commercial bakeries... I will definitely carry on making cakes and pastries the old fashioned way.