April 6, 2020 - 11:37pm
Baking flour dilemma
Hi everyone! Please let me introduce myself, my actual name is Jeanie and I've recently become an avid milk bread crazy lady. Unfortunately, due to the store shelves going empty and Amazon delays, I haven't been able to find any (reasonably priced) unbleached bread flour for my milk bread to turn out right. A good friend suggested I start selling it but without the right flour I feel I'm just spinning my wheels.
My question is this. I've been reading about adding vital wheat gluten to regular all purpose flour to make your own DIY bread flour. Is this comparable to actual bread flour or will there be continuity issues?
Any help is much appreciated! Thank you so much for allowing me to join your community.
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If you do have AP flour on hand, it will be simpler to use that than to guesstimate your way into a bread flour analog by adding gluten. Most likely, the only change you will have to make is to reduce the hydration by 5% or so, since AP flour isn't quite as absorbent as bread flour.
The other plus, in addition to avoiding having to fuss with the gluten, is that milk bread is supposed to be quite tender and the AP flour will help with that. You might even do some reading here about the tangzhong method, which will make your bread even more tender and fluffy. Just use the Search tool in the upper right corner of the page to find posts that mention it.
Paul
Thanks so much for answering, you've been a huge help! :)
Jeanie