A Basic Guide To Flour

Types of flour
Photo by Sonia Nadales on Unsplash

If you like to bake but don’t know the difference between the many types of flour offered for sale in the supermarket, this article is just for you. Let’s dive in and learn about flour and its countless varieties!

White Flour and Whole-Meal Flour

Flour is produced from the grinding of wheat seeds. White flour is produced from the inside of the wheat kernel after the bran is separated from it. Whole-meal flour is flour that is extracted from the grinding of the whole kernel.

Gluten

Gluten is formed in the dough from two proteins that are found in the wheat seed—and also barley and rye—naturally when the flour is mixed with water (actually in the process of preparation by adding liquids to the flour). Kneading the dough develops a network of gluten that in heat simply hardens.

Bread Flour and Cookie Flour

Today you can find all kinds of flour like bread flour, cake flour, flour for cookies, and flour for pasta. So when do you use which flour? This a complex question that depends on the baker’s skill and his expectations of the dough.

Conversion of White Flour to Whole-meal Flour

It is almost never recommended to replace all the white flour in a whole-meal recipe, because whole-meal flour tends to make the pastries heavier and denser.