About Flour

If I knew at first how developed this field is, it might have made me run away. I thought there were three kinds of flour: plain, whole grain, and self‑rising. Why don’t they all self‑rise, right? So there’s bread flour, cake flour, spelt flour, rye flour, Italian, French, German, American, red, blue, sprouted… I bet I’m neglecting at least half of the commercial flour types. Is there a key to understanding how to look at it? Of course. It’s not software engineering. The grain has three main components: 1 – Bran 2 – Endosperm 3 – Germ The tastiest component is the endosperm — the white powder in the flour. In the mill, we try to separate as much as possible between the hard, dark bran and germ from the light endosperm. When we just grind the flour, leaving the whole parts of the wheat grain, we get a dark whole‑grain flour. It has a lot more nutrients and can hold a lot of water, making the resulting bread last for days — as opposed to a light brioche or a fresh hot focaccia that begins to dry after a couple of hours. The French have a system: the darker (more whole grain) the flour, the higher its type number (representing the bran percentage): • Whole grain flour – T100 • Bread flour – T80 • Baguette flour – T65 • Croissants – T55 • Brioche – T45 The Germans have a similar scale: • 405 – cake/pastry flour • 550 – all‑purpose flour • 812 – rye bread flour • 1050 – strong bread • 1600 – whole rye grain The Italians with their fabulous system: • Tipo 00 – like T45 • Tipo 0 – like T55 • Tipo 1 – like T65 • Tipo 2 – like T80 • Tipo Integrale – whole grain The best flour I ever worked with was a freshly ground rye flour that was milled for me the same day, from fresh (dry) wheat. It’s a totally different kind of flour. If you really like whole‑grain breads (you should… it’s tasty — but NOT healthy), I really encourage you to mill the whole grains on your own.