When do you use bread flour

When whole-wheat flour is made, the whole grain is used rather than just the endosperm. All-purpose flour is the most common kind of flour—and it's the best choice when you're making a recipe that doesn't specify a certain kind.

You can buy it bleached or unbleached. Bleached flour has been treated with chemical agents to speed up the flour's aging process, which is beneficial for baking purposes.

Either kind is fine for most recipes—it's usually just a matter of personal preference. Bread flour is a little different—read on to find out the difference between bread flour vs. The main difference between bread flour and all-purpose flour is their protein content. Soft wheat flours, like all-purpose flour, are usually about 8 to 12 percent protein, while hard wheat flours, like bread flour, contain around 12 to 15 percent protein.

This may not seem like a big deal, but a few percent can make a huge difference in your baked goods. More protein in flour means more gluten can develop—and gluten is what gives baked goods structure. Bakers usually prefer bread flour for things that require more body and sturdiness, such as rolls and bread—hence the name! Breads made with all-purpose flour will rise just fine—but those made with bread flour will have more structure, so they'll hold their shape better and rise particularly well.

Although bread flour contains more protein than all-purpose, you can generally swap one for the other, if needed. Oftentimes bread flour or all-purpose flour is substituted for some of the whole wheat flour to help give whole grain loaves a boost.

The bran in whole wheat flour impairs the gluten, so using a flour with more gluten can benefit the loaf's structure and rise. We wanted to see if there was a difference between using bread flour and all-purpose flour to strengthen the rise in a whole wheat loaf. We wondered if the slight difference we saw in the two sandwich loaves would be more pronounced when the flour was given the task of improving the performance of whole grains. The result? The all-purpose loaf was wider across the top more "mushroomed" than the bread flour loaf, just like we saw with the Classic Sandwich Bread recipe.

But other than the all-purpose loaf being slightly more tender, there was little difference between the two. Half all-purpose flour version on the left, half bread flour on the right. Slicing into the loaves revealed insides that were almost identical. For the very best loaf, we always advise bakers to use the type of flour called for in the recipe: bread, or all-purpose.

After all, if a flour is specified, the recipe was developed to provide optimum results when you use the designated flour. But in a pinch, it's totally OK to substitute. So go forth, and bake! You don't want a stiff dough, nor a slack dough, but something that feels perfectly right. Add a little water if the dough seems dry, or a sprinkle of flour if it feels too wet.

Once you've got that blue bag of bread flour in your pantry, the possibilities are endless. Substitute it into a favorite recipe to see how it lifts your loaf, or use it in a recipe calling for bread flour to really see what it can do.

I promise they'll make you thankful you picked up a bag of bread flour. Note: The information in this post pertains to King Arthur Flours only. Other national brands tend to mill lower-protein wheat, and produce lower-protein flour.

So substituting, say, our King Arthur Bread Flour for another company's all-purpose flour may mean a protein swing of 2 to 3 points — which could create a significant difference in your bread's rise and texture. Kye Ameden grew up in Fairlee, Vermont and has always had a love of food, farms, and family.

After graduating from St. I received some King Arthurs bread flour, can I fry food with this, like chicken, pork chops etc.. I see that adding 2 teaspoons of liquid for every cup of bread flour is recommended when using it instead of AP flour. Hi April, unfortunately we don't have a formula for that, but I suspect adding the larger amount of mashed bananas to this recipe should do the trick when substituting bread flour for the all-purpose flour called for.

Be sure to measure your flour carefully by either weighing it g per cup for either our unbleached all-purpose or bread flour , or using this method to measure your flour by volume. However, the Bread Flour will absorb more water and to obtain the correct dough consistency for the first rise, you will need to add more water than the AP Flour recipe calls for.

Since I am a wet then dry ingredient guy, I add more liquid at the start, then add flour until the correct consistency is achieved.

Hi, and thanks for all the wonderful info!! It does, indeed, make softer ciabatta rolls which I make weekly. My question is this: if using the Enhancer, does that affect the need to add more water, or change the ratio of extra water when substituting Bread Flour for AP Flour? There are a ton of flours out there—not just good ol' all-purpose, but pastry, bread, and cake as well. But what's the difference between all-purpose flour and bread flour?

Pastry and cake? Well, in case you couldn't guess, they're all slightly different, and serve specific, slightly different functions. Here are the most common types, what they're all about, and when you should and shouldn't use them.

Note: We're just talking about white wheat flours right now—we'll save a discussion of whole wheat, rye, buckwheat, spelt, and various nut flours for another time. The name pretty much says it all!

Nine times out of ten, this is what you're reaching for when baking or cooking. If you have room for just one flour in your kitchen, all-purpose is your guy. Standard AP flour is a white flour, meaning the wheat grains called wheatberries have been stripped of their bran and germ during processing and grinding, leaving just the starchy endosperm. That means that most AP flours are more shelf stable yeah, flour goes bad!