March 18, 2019 - 10:20pm
Fine wheat flour
Hi,
I’m working my way through the recipes in Erick Kayser’s Larousse Book of Bread, in some of the recipes he lists fine wheat flour as one of the ingredients. Unfortunately, there is no explanation in the book as to what kind of flour that is. Does anybody here have a clue about it? I called the KArthur hotline and the lady seemed to think that it would be what they sell as French Flour but she didn’t sound really sure.
Thanks.
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As far as I can tell, "fine" flour is an old-fashioned general term meaning "nice white flour, not the cheap rough whole-wheat stuff". I believe your recipe should turn out well with anything that fits that general description.
In France they say "plate" or "fleurante" to describe a very smooth and very fine flour, as opposed to "ronde" which would be where you can feel the granules. The English translation probably used "fine wheat flour" as a translation for those words. I can't be sure. It doesn't sound like he was too specific about other aspects of the flour itself (e.g. ash content / extraction rate, protein content, etc), just that the flour should be finely ground.
In the English speaking world, we don't usually differentiate flours based on the coarseness of the grind. Commercial flour is almost always finely ground (with the possible exception of some whole wheat flours where the manufacturer wants the bran to look noticeable so people feel like they got something healthy).