Need help with bread flour

Good questions for sure.  US flours are not specified by ash content. In fact, the grades are labeled by widespread agreement between the large mills, and mainly by their gluten content.  Most US white flours are also malted, either with malted barley or with an enzyme like alpha amylase, for better and more consistent fermenting properties.  Here is a good overall guide to US wheat flours -

https://www.seriouseats.com/wheat-flour-guide

Basically, "all-purpose" flour has a moderate level of gluten (9 - 12%) and  "bread" flour a higher level (12-14%).  Cheaper supermarket flours tend to fall on the low side of each range.  Also, cheaper supermarket flours sometimes don't perform well for making bread, or at least I've seen posts that say so.

Well-known national brands including Gold Medal and Pillsbury perform consistently in my experience, although there have been some suspicions that they are blended differently for different parts of the country.  I can't speak to that from my own experience.  Their bread flour is a little on the low side of the protein range.

Famous large but specialty brands such as King Arthur and Bob's Red Mill also produce good quality consistent flours, often with higher protein levels than the national manufacturers.

Be aware that all large national brands most likely get their wheat sprayed with Roundup soon before harvest, which dries the wheat heads to a more dependable moisture level for harvest.  Many people believe that Roundup is harmful to health.  Organic flours presumably avoid this problem at the cost of lower or more variable yields.

Most home and artisan bakers will only use unbleached flours.  US bleached flours may have been treated with various chemicals to whiten them, including bromine compounds that are said to improve some handling characteristics.  Bromine treatment is illegal in EU countries because it leaves chemical traces that are thought to be cancer-causing.  The US food authorities consider the levels in bromated bread to be acceptable for human health, whereas the European approach is to not allow any measurable level.

Rye flours are not consistently milled nor labeled, they are not categorized by any standard measures that European bakers are used to, and the rye itself is likely to have rather different baking properties, such as falling number, from European ryes.  There are people on the TFL site who know much more about this than I do and will probably post more specific information.

In general, many Canadian and US wheat flours are similar to each other and are higher in protein than many European flours.  I believe that "Manitoba" flour, being originally made from hard Canadian wheat, is probably similar as well but I have never baked with it.  Manitoba flour has its own page on Wikipedia -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manitoba_flour

The article mentions the "W" value of the flour.  In the US, "W" numbers are almost never reported, whether or not the manufacturers measure it for themselves.  Nor is the falling number, nor other measures of baking quality.  OTOH, the large mills try hard to blend flours so that their product is consistent.

I'm trying king Arthur's but would like to know what you guys use and for what type of bread

KA has a reputation for very good quality flour, well deserved I think.  They contract with various mills to produce their flours, and they sell so much that they can get good cooperation from the millers.  Personally, I will use KA all-purpose flour interchangeably with Gold Medal and Pillsbury unbleached AP.  I don't notice any difference between them.  I use KA bread flour when I can get it, and it does have a noticeably higher protein level than Gold Medal's and Pillsbury's bread flour.

This is probably more than you wanted to know!

Welcome to  the US!

Moved from Switzerland to IL almost 26 years ago!!

The flours I use:

Wheat Montana Premium All-Purpose Flour, 160 oz - Walmart.com

This is my all around flour for Pizza, bread, Zopf etc.

 Organic Medium Rye | King Arthur Baking

To get a more rustic type of bread, mixed with Montana wheat

 Organic Type 80 Wheat Flour // Central Milling // Organic Artisan Baking Flour

As close as it gets to Swiss "Ruchmehl" or "Halbweissmehl" for "Bürli" or "St. Gallerli" etc.

Have fun

Thomas

The W parameter, which is used mainly in Germany, is a measure of strength of the flour. "Manitoba" flours are flours with a very high W value (380 or above).

There is a loose correlation between W and protein content. In the US, you might find information about the protein content of a flour: if it's not on the package, I suppose it's on the technical specification on their web site. If the mill has no web site and doesn't indicate the protein content, then it's too sloppy for serious bread making IMHO and you should shop somewhere else.

The loose correlation between W and % protein is this:

W < 160 means proteins < 10%

200 < W < 250 means proteins between 11 and 12%

260 < W < 300 means proteins between 12 and 13%

320 < W < 380 means proteins between 13 and 14%

W > 380 means proteins > 14%

All this, as a rule of thumb.

For bread making one would normally seek a flour in the 12-13% protein content range. That would probably be labelled "bread flour" in the US, or maybe "bread flour" is also used for the 14% protein content flour.

If you bake wholemeal bread, adding a certain amount (one could try with 20%, but YMMV) of "Manitoba" flour (protein content higher than 14%) would probably keep the "brick risk" away while preserving the most of the flavour and nutritional value of wholemeal bread.

i really like central milling’s fine-ground semolina flour. for reasons i don’t really understand they call it “extra fancy durum pasta flour”, even though it is refined and not whole durum. i also only use it for bread; ordinary coarse semolina works fine for pasta (for me, at least), and i can get Bob’s Red Mill coarse semolina at the grocery store.

it is not cheap (and shipping is *really* not cheap), but if you are looking for a semolina remacinata-type flour, this is probably close. and 5-lb bags happen to be on sale right now.

hope this helps,

c