Bay State Milling Co. Bouncer flour
Since getting a Bosch U+ a few months ago,I've really enjoyed making bread and pizzas.We've only bought the common grocery store 5lb AP and Bread flours when on sale till now.We were out of bread flour and after learning a little more here about flours we went to Gordon's Food Service and brought home a 25lb bag of Bay State Milling"bouncer"flour for $11.99.The bag doesn't give a protein %,just says "high gluten" but the very helpful manager looked it up and it's 13.9%protein.I'm hoping to bake thin pizza doughs and a variety of breads with it.We're on a very tite budget so altho I'd love to try an expensive flour,in the real world(mine at least) price matters!!!LOL
I'd really appreciate hearing anyone's opinion/feedback of this brand and/or level protein because I'm just learning,Thanks!!!
I know the flour is inexpensive, however, the Bay State Bouncer flour is bleached and bromated. Bay State Mill uses potassium bromate in its flour.
If you don't mind the bromation, am sure it will make a crispy pizza crust.
A white flour of 11.5 to 12 percent protein is recommended for most breads, so you might find the Bouncer produces a tougher crumb. If you find you don't care for the tougher crumb, you could try experimenting by mixing it with a lower protein flour.
I use bouncer for some sorts of pizza crusts, bagels, and a few sorts of bread. It works just fine for that. Some numbers that might be interesting from the spec sheet:
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Physical & Chemical:
Moisture 14.0 +/- 0.3%
Ash 0.550 +/- 0.030%
Protein (N x 5.7) 13.8 +/- 0.3%
Enzyme Activity: 225 +/- 75 BU
It's a bit strong to use for general bread making, but try it, don't take my word for it. (One of the things I routinely use it for is my cinimaon bread, which I was sure wasn't going to work well with this. Had to adjust the hydration up a couple points, but the bread is soft and has the proper amount of chew.)
Bleached flour? Bromates?
Well I'm about halfway thru the 25lb bag and have made sourdough,challah,italian breads and several types of pizza dough with great results.I haven't found the breads tough at all but I have been mixing a small amount of AP flour in for bread doughs.It seems to work very well for feeding my sourdough.
I won't be getting it again,I was so focused on protein% that I didn't even consider that it was bleached....Duh!!!!,and I didn't know anything about bromated flour till reading about it here.I've made it a point to buy only unbleached flour for yrs now in the grocery store,I can't believe I missed that!!
Stanz Foods has 50lb bags of Gen.Mills full strength patent flour-unbleached,unbromated on their web site and they've got a retail store locally.I haven't been there to see if they stock it and how much $$$ yet but I'm hoping that'll work next time.
Do you know the brand of the bread flour(s) you were using? How does the Bouncer compare to the previous bread flour? Big difference?
Thanks.