Organic AP Flours: closest match for KA AP/Sir Galahad?
I've been using KA Organic AP which I pick up (or have my sister pick up for me) on the way to visit her in Vermont -- it's very attractively priced in 5lb bags at their store. But I'm starting to consume more than this "free shipping" arrangement can handle, and the mail-order price is...not so nice. None of my local groceries carry this flour.
A local bakery supplier will sell me KA Organic Select Artisan in 50# bags qty 1. The price isn't great as he doesn't usually carry this item and is getting it from another supplier -- of course he won't tell me who. But, also, looking at the KA web site I see the specs for Organic Select Artisan are not the same as for the Organic AP -- it looks like the retail Organic AP is formulated to perform as closely to the retail AP (professional Sir Galahad) as possible while the Organic Select Artisan has been tweaked a bit (lower protein, 11.3% vs 11.7%, and all-winter-wheat as opposed to winter/spring blend).
NY Bakers repackages the Sperry Organic Bread (General Mills) flour in 5lb bags and the shipping actually isn't prohibitive if I buy enough. My concern with this flour is that the spec sheet makes it look like the canonical example of what KA's talking about when they say other brands' specifications are loose -- no falling number is specified and the protein content is given as "12% +/- 1%". The specs on the conventional (non-organic) General Mills flours are nice and tight of course -- I assume with the Sperry brand they're keeping prices down by not hunting all over for spot quantities of organic wheat to get the product exactly in-spec to a tight specification...
Has anyone used this flour (Sperry Organic Bread)? Enough to know if it's really more consistent from batch to batch than the spec suggests? How about the KA Organic Select -- before I buy 50# at a so-so price I'd rather know if the difference from the retail-packaged product is even noticeable, much less important.
I can get the Sperry at a decent price locally too but I don't want to risk buying 50# at a time of a product that might vary considerably from batch to batch(!)