Unidentified bulk flour, why does it smell and taste so amazing?
Please help me figure out why this store-split bulk bread flour made my bread smell and taste better than anything I've ever tried before.
I've baked hundreds of loaves over the years, using bread and AP flours from any retail brand I could find on East Coast shelves, including King Arthur, Heckers/Ceresota, Bob's Red Mill, Pillsbury Best, Gold Medal, etc., but not one loaf came out with that otherworldly aroma that drags you by the nose off the sidewalk into a bakery, nor the taste that just plain makes you happy when you bite into it.
And I tried everything to extract more flavor: different yeasts, hydrations, preferments, levains, retardation, you name it. I read books, I scoured forums, could never figure out what I was missing. I even plumbed in a steam injection oven- fantastic crusts, still no flavor. I had pretty much given up on it, until the local grocery offered a store-split generic "bread flour" during the recent shortage, and BOOM! Out of nowhere, just like that, my bread smells and tastes like real bread. I am on the verge of tears.
Of course I ran back to the store to find out what it was, but they didn't have the bulk packaging anymore, and all the manager could find out was that it was "Pillsbury bread flour." Well, it most certainly is not the retail Pillsbury Best Bread Flour, which I've used many times before to no such results. So what was it?
General Mills apparently sells 15 different bulk flours under the Pillsbury™ brand, including "Balancer", "So Strong", "XXXX Patent", "Potentate", "Best Bakers Patent", "XXXX All Purpose", "Bakery A Patent", "Hotel and Restaurant", and "Evenloaf". I really don't want to try out all of these in 50-lb. bags.
Do you have any suggestion as to what it might be that I am smelling/tasting? Is there a feature, like wheat variety or processing or an additive, that's not available in retail packaging, but might be responsible for that bakery aroma? There's got to be something. I'm not talking about some rarefied nuance here, it's night and day. Even my wife, who doesn't care much for bread in general, commented unprovoked that I'd finally baked something that smelled good.
Any suggestions would be most deeply appreciated.
The distributer should know. Must be a bill somewhere.
My first guess would be the young age of the flour was responsible for the nicer smell and taste. Flour moves through the commercial channels faster than the retail channel. (this is not age "since harvest", but rather age "since milling".)
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There are three main attributes to choose from, in trying to identify the specific product: protein level, bleached or not, bromated or not.
(The two minor attributes are: enriched or not, and malted or not. But all refined/white flour except some pizza flour is malted in the US.)
Clues and guesses:
1. protein. If it was advertised as "bread flour" it was likely "patent" which has 12% to 12.6% protein, among Pillsbury's offerings. (ie, not all purpose, and not high gluten.)
2. bleached. Was it noticeably white or was it more creamy? White(er) would hint at being bleached.
3. bromated. Did it rise faster/more than normal unbromated flour that you have used? Faster/more rise would hint at bromated.
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If the store has an in-store bakery, it likely would have been the same type they used for their own baked products.
Age it is. Flour flavor peaks some time shortly after it's milled. Best bread I ever made was from a bag of flour I got directly from a mill 2-3 weeks after it was milled. I am always tempted to start milling my own, but laziness prevails--that and 80-90+ degree days in the summer.
Yup, that was it, thank you! The rest of the bag I had became less flavorful over days, and other bags of the same flour I went back and bought, from the same bulk batch as the first, were similarly degraded already. No other differences in bleach, bromation, or protein content than flours I'd tried.
Wow, I had no idea that age since milling would make such a big difference in flavor, given the common conception of flour as a fairly durable pantry item. But I guess it's not that different than old vs. freshly ground coffee.
Thank you for the insightful guess, much appreciated!