Choosing the Right Flour for your Baked Products | SwissBake® (2024)

Choosing the Right Flour for your Baked Products | SwissBake®

Baking just isn't complete without one crucial ingredient: FLOUR! Baking is all about taking flour and turning it into a wide variety of delicious treats, like breads, biscuits, cookies, cakes, tarts, croissants, macarons, and pastries. Essentially, it's the process of making different batters and doughs using flour.

When it comes to baking, flour is the key to achieving the perfect result. It's not just about the type of flour you use, like 00 flour, pizza flour, or bread flour, but also about how it's made up, how much you use, and the specific techniques you employ in professional baking.

Choosing the Right Flour for your Baked Products | SwissBake® (1)

Different Types of Flours for Different Bakery Products

There's a whole variety of flours out there, from all-purpose to pastry, bread to refined, wheat to multigrain, and the list goes on. These flours are used for all sorts of bakery goodies, whether it's artisanal breads, delicate pastries, or gourmet snacks. Each type of flour serves a specific purpose and has its unique composition. It's important to use them in the right proportions and with precise techniques to get the best results in terms of taste and quality. This applies to specialty flour like 00 flour, pizza flour, and bread flour too.

Composition or Proportion of Flours?

Have you ever thought about what's even more crucial than getting the right amount of flour in your recipe? It's the makeup of the flour itself. While getting the proportions right is vital, it's equally important to consider the flour's composition. Different flours have varying levels of gluten strength, protein content, and enzyme blends, which directly affect the texture of the dough, batter consistency, and the overall structure and stability of your baked goods. That's why selecting flour with the right composition is key to baking the perfect treat.

Choosing the Right Flour for your Baked Products | SwissBake® (2)Choosing the Right Flour for your Baked Products | SwissBake® (3)Choosing the Right Flour for your Baked Products | SwissBake® (4)

Professional Flours vsRegular Flours?

The type of flour you use affects how dough stretches, bounces back, and holds its shape, as well as the texture, size, and taste of your baked goods. Professional flours are specially made to meet certain standards for different kinds of baking. So, if you want to impress your customers with top-notch baked treats, using professional-grade flour instead of regular flour can make a big difference in how they turn out.

For example,

When you're crafting delicious pizzas, sometimes the dough can shrink back. But no worries! You can solve this by using special pizza flour, such as 00 flour or pizza flour, which contains ingredients that help the dough relax. Similarly, when you're baking artisan slices of bread, having a uniform texture is important. This is where consistent levels of gluten, granulation, and ash content in the flour come into play, making a big difference. Some special flours even include extra ingredients that boost the taste and appearance of the final baked treats, giving them that classic, traditional flavor and look.

The differences in baked goods are hard to miss because they're directly influenced by the quality of the flour used. This affects everything from how consistent your bakery items are to their size, taste, appearance, how the dough behaves, and even its texture. So, using professional-grade flour the right way can lead you straight to bakery success. On the flip side, using the wrong flour can be a recipe for disaster in your bakery.

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Flour is often the main ingredient in baked goods, so it holds a lot of power in shaping your final products. Choosing high-quality flours can make your professional baking journey smoother and result in consistently delicious treats that will impress your customers.

SwissBake® offers a specialty range of professional baking flours, carefully formulated in Switzerland to enhance the baking experience and ensure top-notch results. To learn more about our professional baking flours, click here

Choosing the Right Flour for your Baked Products | SwissBake® (2024)

FAQs

How to choose flour for baking? ›

Different types of wheat contain varying levels of protein, and when milled make ideal flours for different baking purposes. Soft wheat has less protein and makes the best pastries and cakes, while hard wheat has more protein and is perfect for producing yeasted bread.

Does the brand of flour make a difference in baking? ›

Good quality flour from a reputable producer is developed in a consistent manner. When we want our baked goods to turn out the same every time, we need to adopt a brand we like and stick to it so we can create consistent results. A cheaper brand, may have greater variation from one batch to another.

Why is King Arthur flour better? ›

What you get—instead of those chemical bleaching agents—is flour from superior grains grown by farmers we trust. Our flour is carefully milled according to the strictest specifications that we've developed over generations to give you the best, most consistent results at home.

What flour do chefs use? ›

Flour Protein

Bakers and pastry chefs alike have a variety of flour to choose from today, from whole wheat flour and rye flour to nut flour and alternative flours for dietary customizations such as gluten-free. Selecting a flour depends on what you want to bake and the texture you desire.

What is the best flour to replace all-purpose flour with? ›

But if you don't have any in the pantry, or can't find any in the store, there are other flours you can use in its place. Bread flour and cake flour—on their own or mixed together—can substitute for all-purpose.

What is the best butter to use for baking? ›

The biggest difference in butter is the amount of salt. For baking purposes, the Test Kitchen recommends using unsalted butter so you can better control the amount of salt that goes into the recipe. Salted butter is best for serving at the table with bread or to flavor a dish, like mashed potatoes.

Why do bakers use all-purpose flour? ›

All-purpose flour is versatile, as it contains an average amount of protein. The more protein in the wheat, the more gluten is formed. Gluten provides elasticity to the dough, helping it stretch and trap the gases formed by leavening agents like yeast and baking powder.

What flour do bakeries use? ›

Pastry flour is the middle ground between cake flour and all-purpose flour. Professional bakers love that it's finely milled with a protein content that hovers around eight to nine percent, striking the perfect balance between flakiness and tenderness while maintaining structure.

What is the best all-purpose flour for baking? ›

The Best All Purpose Flours

If you bake a lot of bread and prefer stocking only one flour in your kitchen, we recommend buying a higher-protein all-purpose flour such as King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour or Bob's Red Mill Unbleached White All-Purpose Flour.

How do I choose all-purpose flour? ›

We recommend a moderate-protein all-purpose flour for the vast majority of baked goods, but for baked goods that require a little more gluten development, a high-protein all-purpose flour is preferable. We almost never call for low-protein all-purpose flour.

Does it matter if you use all-purpose flour or self-rising flour? ›

Can you use self-rising flour instead of all-purpose flour? You might be able to use self-rising flour instead of all-purpose flour, but this only applies if your recipe calls for baking powder as a leavening agent. It shouldn't be used for recipes that call for baking soda, yeast, or any other leavening agents.

Should I use plain flour or self-raising flour? ›

Unlike plain flour, self-rising flour already comes pre-mixed with a fixed distribution of salt and a raising agent out of the box. Generally, self-rising flour also has a lower protein content, so it's often used in recipes that benefit from being lighter and more tender, like biscuits.

How can I tell if my flour is bread flour or all-purpose flour? ›

The primary difference between bread flour and all-purpose flour is the protein content. Bread flour has more protein (King Arthur's is 12.7%) than all-purpose (11.7%). For context, pastry and cake flours have less, about 8% to 10%, respectively.

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