understanding flours

How often have you been to the supermarket standing in the queue and the next thing you remember is the ambiguity choosing between the kind of flour you need to make that pizza dough or those tasty waffles at your home? But in all honesty, there are more things in life that may bring out the decisive persona in you, so why waste time browsing through the internet – or books – to read about flour. Let me give you a gist on different types of flour and which one should you rather pick the next time you’re in that queue.

You’ve probably already heard of different types of flours, but let me briefly explain to you about different type of flours and its properties for you to understand better.

1. Cake Flour

Cake flour softer variant of All Purpose Flour. Classic cake flour is finely milled, which results in a very fine crumb in the baking goods. It has low protein content since it’s mostly made out of endosperm – around 6-8% of protein content, to be precise – but has very fine consistency and is suitable for making fine baked goods, cookies, short pastries, and more. The fine consistency helps in better formation of cake and also make the cake softer.

2. Bread Flour

As its name gives away, Bread flour is ideal for making bread. It has about 12-13% protein content and has a very coarse consistency. The latter means it’s not suitable for all bakery products, but bread goods. It is, however, to note that this comes out as extremely suitable for savoury pastries as well as for light mixed and dark wheat bread.

The gluten formation helps with increased stretchability, giving ideal results for when you want your kitchen to smell of bread.

3. Pizza Flour

Are you hunting for flour to make those super crunchy pizza bases? Well, as its name suggests, Pizza Flour is the one to look for in this case. This super fine flour is very soft and basically has the same amount of protein content as bread flour. This is, of course, not surprising when you consider how it turns out to be in those devilishly tasty and super chewy pizza bases. If all this Pizza talk already got you hungry for some good ol’ Pizza, check out my other pages where I go deep into how to make the best homemade pizza with an in-house made dough, all thanks to the Pizza Flour!

The same flour can be used to make fresh Pastas as well. It constitutes Semolina also called Durum which helps in forming the desired shape and for enhanced stretchability for rolling out the Pizza Dough.

4. All Purpose Flour (Maida)

It may be all purpose by its name, but it’s the All Popular Flour in all its eternity if you ask me. Yes, All Purpose Flour is the most commonly used flour that’s designed in a way it’s suitable for making cakes, cookies, pizza doughs, crusty bread to pancakes. It’s a mid-strength medium-gluten flour. While an All Purpose Flour might do the job just fine for all other Flours we talked about earlier, it is a master of none. However, I’d still recommend trying making the same recipe of Pizza with All Purpose Flour and Pizza Flour to see the difference. The All Purpose Flour is designed from a mix of hard and soft wheat.

5. Gluten Free Flour

Something which is trending right now is Gluten Free Flour. A lot of bakers, home chefs, and fitness enthusiasts have started baking and using Gluten Free Flour. As gluten is not present in Flour, the dish is ought to become lighter and healthier. To try a Gluten Free recipe, click here to make an Almond Cake using Almond Flour.

So now that you’re aware of the kind of flour you need, I’m sure picking a pack of flour next time won’t be an issue as it would have been earlier. Let us know in the comments section what’s the next thing you’re making from one of these flours. Stay tuned for more informative pieces of information like this.