Lithuanian wheat flours
Hello! This is my first post here on TFL, and straight away I'm starting with a somewhat obscure question.
I am aware of German, Polish and so on flour classification, listing ash content which indicates the type of flour, for example Type-550 (popular in Germany, Poland), but here in Lithuania (and Latvia, though I may be wrong) all flour is classified not only by its ash, but also by gluten content, for example a typical German Type-550 equivalent would be 550D flour. The letter D would stand for the amount of gluten in the flour and the closer a letter is to the beginning of the alphabet, the more gluten there is (A being the highest, but I've never seen even a B in stores).
That would all be good and dandy, but I got to searching what do the letters mean more precisely. All I could stumble upon is the website of one our country's biggest flour distributors. On their website the following information is posted (link here: http://www.malsena.lt/en/produktai/profesionalams/kvietiniai-miltai/betariai-kvietiniai-miltai/tipas-550 [1] ).
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Type 550Wheat flour is milled from soft wheat grain. It is used as the main material for bread products and sweet pastries and snacks; it makes up almost 1/3 of all products used for food.
Quality indicators of Superior grade wheat flour (type 550):
Type | Ash, % | Gluten, % |
550 B | 0,51-0,63 | 31-32 |
550 C | 0,51-0,63 | 28-30 |
550 D | 0,51-0,63 | 25-27 |
550 E | 0,51-0,63 | 22-24 |
LST 1133 classifies wheat flour into types determined by the residue of mineral substances, i.e. ash and gluten proteins, after burning the flour. The number indicates the ash content and the letter indicates the gluten content.
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As you can see, the table lists even the lowest gluten level at 22-24 %! I find this odd, because while reading American baking books, I read that what you call bread flour has 11.5 - 13.5 % gluten, and Peter Reinhart even mentions that in high-gluten flour it is a "rare, but possible" occurence to see 16 % gluten.
So I suppose my question is - what gives? The table can't be right exactly, but I can't imagine how it could be wrong either. Note that I can't really compare this to any more conventional flour, because I've been baking with local flours all my life and they perform fine - I'm just curious as to the classification. I can't actually get the official LST 1133 standard - it is, very stupidly in my opinion, only available by (not cheap) mail order.