January 27, 2012 - 9:19am
What's the best use of supermarket flour?
A well-intention friend gifted me with 10 pounds of supermarket flour as a thank you for making them bread, and I'm wondering what to do with it. It's Baker's Corner brand APF from Aldi's, bleached, 10% protein. I'm interested in the challenge of making excellent bread or baked goods from processed flour. Any suggestions?
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Comments
just about anything (okay, not bagels) but especially for pie crusts, cakes, cookies, biscuits, or French-style breads that are better with a flour that has a lower level of gluten, such as yours.
Paul
mixing it with other flour is one way to use it up
wayne
and I understand, I have noted the decrease in quality from goods baked with "inferior" flour, then use it for dusting!
There is no way to avoid needing to dust your work surfaces, proofing baskets, etc, with flour. You may as well use flour you have no attachment too. I have, in the past, actually purchased lower grade flour just for the purpose of using for dusting. And of course I felt so much better to be using that flour, not my expensive flour, for something that is at least a little wasteful.
I look everywhere for it to use in my puff paste, croissants, danish, soft buns, hamburger and hot dog wrappers, sourdoughs and so many other baked goods where expensive bread or high gluten flours are inferior. Perfect for white faces at Halloween too!
Is there a food bank in your town?
you could add wheat bran, wheat germ, flax seed or? to enrich the bread.
claudia
Thank you all! Responding to Lloydb first, we do have a community kitchen in our town, but I want to take on the challenge of baking something excellent to give back to the people who gave me the ingredients. I tend to bake high-protein sourdoughs in which the taste of the flour is very important so I was flummoxed. The idea of add-ins is a good way to go... I'm thinking of sweets as well as wheat germ etc. Actually adapting one of my levain recipes and adding a scoop of wheat germ is what I'm going to try first. Then some cinnamon buns which my 9 year old will thank me for... I'm interested to enter the world of low-protein bakes in which my Bakers Corner, as Paul notes, will be an asset instead of a handicap.
Dabrownman, love the Halloween faces idea!