The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

What flour was it ?

Axel's picture
Axel

What flour was it ?

Hello,

Here in China I tested flour. It was white wheat flour, high gluten with no additives and unbleached ( I think )

The flour was very thirsty. I mixed by hand and easily reached 80 % hydration. The dough was very easy to work with, I could shape baguettes with it. Baked baguettes had nice open yellow crumb and brown thin crust after 20 min of baking at 250 C. But the flavour was very strange, not sweet, not nutty, not wheaty.

I am curious what  is in the flour.

pmccool's picture
pmccool

And no, I'm not trying to be a smart-aleck.  Even if the label isn't illuminating, just telling us the brand name might be enough for some of our posters in that part of the world to give you some feedback.

Paul

Windischgirl's picture
Windischgirl

I wonder if there was some added soy flour.  Soy flour is very soft, silky, beige in color, but when baked will give a yellow crumb and a darker crust--soy flour tends to brown more quickly than wheat flour.  It doesn't take much flour to have this effect on the final product.  Soy will also give the bread an unusual flavor--beany with bitter undertones.

  Since soy does not have gluten, I would guess that the flour had a fairly large percentage of wheat flour to give you the open crumb.

Just a guess!  (Hope it wasn't melamine!!)

Axel's picture
Axel

This is an interesting theory, I didn't think about that. I guess it could be anything in there : ) very difficult to get any info. Suppliers do not know what they sell and manufacturers ignore you completely. The websites are virtualy empty.

I will not use that flour again - too strange. Just esterday I used supposedly the most reputable flour on the market - Golden Statue from Hong Kong Mills and it was tottaly dameged. I couldn't mix dough with 70% hydration - it was like a bowl of soup.

upset