Global Flour Differences

AromaCucina's picture
AromaCucina
Ciao. I'm new to the forum, but I'm excited to have found you.
A little background: I live in New York and Italy where I do private chefing, instruction and blogging. In Italy, I have a number of Australian guests who are always asking me what is the equivalent of Italian bread flour.
In Italy, I use a brand of hard wheat that is grown in the US, but milled in Italy. It's readily available in my rural neck of the woods (Umbria).

What type of flour do you Australians use as your basic white bread flour?
Grazie mille!
Judith
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Danubian's picture
Danubian 2008 April 26
Hi Judith, welcome to the baord.

The short answer is that Australian bread flours are similar; there are probably a few differences such as amylase content/falling number [url=http://www.wheat-research.com.au/media/factsheets/Falling_Number.pdf]for an explanation of [b]Falling Number[/b][/url]

and perhaps protein quality and content. [url=http://www.wheat-research.com.au/media/factsheets/Dough_Strength.pdf]an explanation here[/url].

There could also particle size variations depending exactly which type of Italian flour you are referring to but by and large it'll be reasonably similar or equivalent.




AromaCucina's picture
AromaCucina 2008 April 29
Thanks Danubian. Good, although somewhat intimidating info on those links. Fortunately I don't have consistency as a major issue, I can run with seasonal differences in the wheat. Thanks God for small favors.
I think the primary difference is going to be protein strength.

What is the 'go to' white bread flour in Australia? The intro level bread flour, if you get what I mean.
Danubian's picture
Danubian 2008 April 29

which means it has an ash content of .550 and a protein content above 10%, but mostly about 11.5 - 12.75%, but can be up to 13.4% depending where it was grown and which variety of wheat dominates the mill grist.

European wheat flour T 550 has similar baking properties.

 

 


 

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