Forum Thermomix
Questions Doubts and Requests => Questions? Technical Issues? The Survival Guide => Topic started by: natalia on May 05, 2012, 09:28:27 am
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Hi everyone, I have noticed in the bread section that 3 different flours are used: plain, baker's and bread flour. I was just wondering what the difference between these flours are? Could I just substitute plain flour in these recipes or is the type of flour very important in breads and doughs? Thanks, Natalia
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Natalie I would peruse the thread . There is a lot of expertise there.
Gert
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Natalia, I don't know which part of the world you live in and I agree all these different flours are rather confusing. Plain flour is what you would use for pastry, cakes, biscuits etc. Bread flour is what you would use for bread - often called strong (plain) bread flour. Although I live in the UK, I buy Canadian bread flour which is harder and contains more gluten than the UK variety. Not sure what Baker's flour is (possibly pastry flour), so you may need to contact the member who uses baker's flour to find out what it is, although I have heard of it. For pizza bases I use a soft (tenero) Italian 00 flour, but there is also a 00 Italian 'semola dura' hard flour which I use for pasta and sometimes use in bread dough combined with the Canadian flour.
Also remember that different flours react differently in different climates as well. It is a bit of a nightmare really :(
JB
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I take the simple way out here and use plain flour for everything. I have never really noticed any major differences ( when I say everything, I mean cakes, biscuits, bread....I do still have oo flour for pasta and atta, rye, spelt and maize for other stuff). I have gluten flour that I add a couple of teaspoons to a recipe if it needs an extra oomph, and bulk baking powder, both of which I get from a fantastic Greek deli (also get my rye flour there). It got too confusing remembering to buy the different flours and labeling them.
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stacelee i know somtimes its hard to describe what do you mean by, if it needs an extra oomph, i what extra oomph ;D
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Natalia, I don't know which part of the world you live in and I agree all these different flours are rather confusing. Plain flour is what you would use for pastry, cakes, biscuits etc. Bread flour is what you would use for bread - often called strong (plain) bread flour. Although I live in the UK, I buy Canadian bread flour which is harder and contains more gluten than the UK variety. Not sure what Baker's flour is (possibly pastry flour), so you may need to contact the member who uses baker's flour to find out what it is, although I have heard of it. For pizza bases I use a soft (tenero) Italian 00 flour, but there is also a 00 Italian 'semola dura' hard flour which I use for pasta and sometimes use in bread dough combined with the Canadian flour.
Also remember that different flours react differently in different climates as well. It is a bit of a nightmare really :(
JB
Agree, I am in Australia where we are blessed with a wide variety of wheat flours. It is also important to have fresh flour for baking bread.
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Thanks ladies, I am in Australia. I must confess, I am quite a minimalist (which is why I like the tmx), so hopefully stacelee, if I follow your approach if using plain flour (which is also significantly cheaper) all will go well. I think if u had several flours and had to remember which flour to use when it would become to overwhelming.
Has anyone had any trouble with just using plain flour for everything? Thanks again, Natalia
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natalia, i do a lot of baking and there is no way i would use just one flour for everything. i don't find it at all confusing and buy a 10k bag of bread flour from Laucke which is a 'mix'. No need to add sug. salt or gluten or improver. When making biscuits, I use half bread flour and half ordinary flour. What you use depends a lot on how much you bake. It is all so much cheaper than buying baked goods, and the TMX makes it so easy.
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natalia, i do a lot of baking and there is no way i would use just one flour for everything.
I agree and I certainly would never use plain flour for bread, it just doesn't have the gluten that you need. A general guidline is to look at the protein content which should be listed on the packaging. In the UK, our bread flour ranges from 11% (a little low IMHO) to 13.9%. Flour made from wheat grown in warmer, dryer climates such as Australia and some parts of Canada will contain more gluten than that made from British wheat, which is why I tend to buy Canadian (15% protein).
I did try making bread with plain flour a couple of times in my youth, but it was a disaster ...
JB
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Touch wood, I've never had any problems using plain flour to make bread. I have a recipe that I use pretty much every day for olive oil bread that works well with plain flour. I also have a rye bread recipe that works a little to well.....it overrose and broke my milk bread tin! Maybe it depends on the recipe.
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I am a flour tragic. At the moment I have bakers' flour, rye flour, spelt flour, plain flour, SR flour, and kamut flour in the cupboard. I'm going away for a while so it is a bit reduced. I love using all the different ones for breads.
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Like Chookie, I've been baking and breadmaking for years & wouldn't dream of using just plain flour for everything. In particular, ordinary, plain cake flour does not have enough gluten in it for bread baking. Nothing will go wrong with the bread, but you will not have the proper texture, hydration and density, nor a decent crumb.
I'd really urge you to try some strong bread flour.
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Ditto Cookie. We can also get a special flour for making ciabatta, which works beautifully and I am sure you would be able to get it in Australia. :)
JB
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I tried adding gluten flour to plain flour a couple of times when I was visiting elsewhere and didn't have bakers' flour with me. While the resulting pizza/bread was acceptable, it was definitely not as good as what I produce at home with bakers' flour. I don't know if I got the ratio of gluten to plain flour wrong, or if the oven was different to mine in temperature, etc.
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is the gluten flour available at coles or woolies ???
so far i have been more than happy using plain flour .
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is the gluten flour available at coles or woolies ???
so far i have been more than happy using plain flour .
Are you saying Uni that you have been using only plain flour for all the wonderful breads you make?
Gert
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yes the no name stuff,my bad :-))
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yes the no name stuff,my bad :-))
You don't add anything to it? Amazing. Goes to show eh? I just buy the 5 kilo sacks of Kookaburra or whatever when on special but now..........
Gert
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just the normal stuff + bread improver
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I get gluten flour at the health food shop, or occasionally one of the big fruit and vege grocers that have lots of exotic things you don't see at the supermarket.
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thank jkmt ,i will try some just to see if theres any difference.
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Most of my bread baking is done with just the plain flour....no bread improver, no gluten and it seems to turn out fine. I was buying bread flour from Global Trading here in Underwood, but I kept running out of time to get there so I was just using whatever flour I had at home (which was normally cheap home branded aldi, woolies etc). The main recipe that I add the gluten flour to is a rye bread recipe from the "Hot Bread Book" for bread makers, and that is only because the recipe asks for it. My main recipe is 400g water, 1.5 tablespoons oil, 600g flour and 14g yeast and 1 tsp salt. That makes a pretty nice loaf/rolls that normally only last one day (my 16/17 year old is fussy and won't eat day old bread.....so I bake every day....and yes I have told him he is a spoilt brat). The rye bread is normally a weekend recipe because it takes me a little longer to get the ingredients out of the cupboard. My family are going to suffer for the next two weeks because I will be putting in 11 hour days at work and won't have time to bake, so store bought bread it will probably be unless someone else finally works out that making bread is not that hard!
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Stacelee, your recipe has nearly twice the yeast that many other recipes have. This compensates for the low gluten in the flour that you are using. It also has a higher percentage of water. This is what the commercial bakeries do. Water and more yeast with cheap flour make for more profits. If this works well for you, go with it. Everyone likes something different in their bread, this is what makes it such a challenge.
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I just had a look at my original recipe....its actually a Bourke Street Bakery recipe. It states 14g fresh yeast, which would work out to be about 7g (give or take) active dry yeast. I am a bit of an ADHD cook so I flick between fresh and active depending on what I can easily get at the time...the recipe also is supposed to have 20ml buttermilk which I only add when I've actually got it in the fridge. I always have a bit of the last batch sitting in the fridge which I dump into the new batch...I think each loaf now has a bit of dough that dates back at least six months which probably adds to the flavour. As I said I'm a bit of a ditz when it comes to cooking and I dump in whatever takes my fancy so it can have anything from chia seeds to left over olives and sun dried tomatoes in the end result...I only follow a recipe to the letter if I am going to be feeding people other than my own family. Then I am paranoid about poisoning people (i.e whether it is edible)....my own family eat whatever it is or starve....luckily I don't have too many disasters.
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Love your description of how you make a loaf. I'll bet they are all different and great. You are using 3 raising agents, yeast, buttermilk and sour dough. Great, this is what many commercial bakeries do and call it Sourdough.
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Interesting that this is a Bourke Street Bakery recipe. I've got that book and am not in love with it at all. I've not had any resounding success with it yet. In fact a good friend of mine who is a brilliant sourdough bread maker said she threw her copy of this book out!
I just had a look at my original recipe....its actually a Bourke Street Bakery recipe. It states 14g fresh yeast, which would work out to be about 7g (give or take) active dry yeast. I am a bit of an ADHD cook so I flick between fresh and active depending on what I can easily get at the time...the recipe also is supposed to have 20ml buttermilk which I only add when I've actually got it in the fridge. I always have a bit of the last batch sitting in the fridge which I dump into the new batch...I think each loaf now has a bit of dough that dates back at least six months which probably adds to the flavour. As I said I'm a bit of a ditz when it comes to cooking and I dump in whatever takes my fancy so it can have anything from chia seeds to left over olives and sun dried tomatoes in the end result...I only follow a recipe to the letter if I am going to be feeding people other than my own family. Then I am paranoid about poisoning people (i.e whether it is edible)....my own family eat whatever it is or starve....luckily I don't have too many disasters.
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Interesting that this is a Bourke Street Bakery recipe. I've got that book and am not in love with it at all. I've not had any resounding success with it yet. In fact a good friend of mine who is a brilliant sourdough bread maker said she threw her copy of this book out!
I just had a look at my original recipe....its actually a Bourke Street Bakery recipe. It states 14g fresh yeast, which would work out to be about 7g (give or take) active dry yeast. I am a bit of an ADHD cook so I flick between fresh and active depending on what I can easily get at the time...the recipe also is supposed to have 20ml buttermilk which I only add when I've actually got it in the fridge. I always have a bit of the last batch sitting in the fridge which I dump into the new batch...I think each loaf now has a bit of dough that dates back at least six months which probably adds to the flavour. As I said I'm a bit of a ditz when it comes to cooking and I dump in whatever takes my fancy so it can have anything from chia seeds to left over olives and sun dried tomatoes in the end result...I only follow a recipe to the letter if I am going to be feeding people other than my own family. Then I am paranoid about poisoning people (i.e whether it is edible)....my own family eat whatever it is or starve....luckily I don't have too many disasters.
Amanda, I also have this book, but have made nothing from it. I don't know why. Must have another look and see.
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Chookie, I'll be interested to see what you make of it. I had dismal failures from it and know of several others who had similar experiences.
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Amanda, will have another look at it.