Bread Flour

OK...I am a believer! If you want to make bread, get some bread flour.

See it's all about gluten. Gluten is the stuff that holds the bread together...kind of like glue, but it also makes the dough stretchy or elastic. Regular "all purpose" flour generally has 10-12% gluten protein, bread flour is more like 12.5-14%. So more gluten is more better right? Well I am thinking it depends, because it is possible to get flour with an even higher percentage of gluten protein, but the recipes in my book call for "bread flour". So it makes sense that as with most things it is all about having the right balance.

When I started this little bread making adventure we already had a big bag of King Author brand all purpose flour. I had read that King Author flour was a higher gluten flour, so I figure it is something like a 12%. My thinking was that this was almost the same as a bread flour so it should work fine. Upon reflection, I didn't take into account that the author was developing these recipes using a high quality bread flour. So his recipes are most likely expecting a bread flour on the higher end of the scale. In other words I was thinking I was only off by half a point when in reality I was probably off by more like two points.

So last night I started a batch of french bread using bread flour and everything worked more like the book describes. Something I really didn't expect was how much better it was at "doubling". I figure that has something to do with the elasticity part. Since the bread is more "stretchy" the yeast was able to perform better...it had more room to stretch out. I probably should have reflected on this a bit more when I decided that it might make things a bit easier if I just made one loaf...one HUGE loaf. My previous loafs have all seemed a bit small and I figured the full batch would give a loaf more like the loaves I see at the store. What I got instead is a loaf that is twice as big as those.

However, the biggest surprise is that it tastes better. Without a doubt we can thank the yeast for this too. More "fermentation"...more flavor. We are definitely getting close to something pretty great. I am also wondering how much less frustrating rustic bread would have been with the proper flour...not that I am ready to go down that read yet.

Anyway...buy some bread flour.