Flour affecting taste?
A question please. Is it possible for the taste of a bread recipe to change if the flour used is changed? I have a bread that I make all the time, it uses a cup of starter. I always use King Arthur regular flour (AP) and the taste is really good, changes in your mouth as you chew. I had to use another brand as the store was out of KA. It is a well known leading brand and I thought nothing of it. However, this morning when I toasted the first slice from this bread, I noticed something was missing and I could not put my finger on it. Bland. Mediocre taste. Then it hit me, I had changed flours. Am I making more of this than is really possible, is it my imagination? Nothing else had changed but the flour. Thanks in advance for any replies. Jean P.(VA)
In this case KA AP is about equal to other brand Bread Flour.
Jim
WOW! Thanks so much for the reply. That's what is great about baking bread, always learning new things! Now I've got 2 loaves to eat before I can remedy this. Jean
Combine (half and half) of KA AP with the other AP and see how that turns out.
Jim
I definitely taste the difference in flours but it seems some others don't so much. I enjoy variety so have a bunch of different flours including several from Stan at www.nybakers.com -- but I also bounce back and forth between King Arthur bread flour and GM Better for Bread at the grocery. Lately, I've been preferring the GM for grocery flour. But that will change.
The late friend who first taught me to make bread swore that you could just buy whatever generic AP flour was at the grocery and it made no difference. Thinking back on her bread, however, she made lots of additions to the classic 4 (salt, flour, yeast, H20). Her bread had at least, as I remember, powdered milk and melted butter in it.
My favorite breads are just flour, salt, yeast and filtered water so that the taste of the flour comes through.
Some flours are better than others and taste is most definitely a strong indicator. If flavor is a concern (how could it not be?), I would find organic flour as these flours generally produce the finest flavors in bread.
Jeff
Just a thought -- Often when bread tastes bland, we discover that the salt was mistakenly left out. Is there any chance you did that? The small amount of salt used in most formulas has a huge impact on the flavor of the bread.
Jaywillie, Thanks for your response. I have already overcome the "leaving the salt out" problem! Once you do that, you don't want a repeat. So I always make sure I include it. In this recipe, the one change was the flour and I think that may have been it. I will be redoing it next week and will know for sure.
Happy bread baking, Jean