How to Choose a Flour to Make Bread

Series Summary

Bread has been a staple food for thousands of years. Even before yeast was discovered to make it rise bread has been some of the main nourishment for people in every era in almost every civilization. It is thought that bread dates back as far as the Neolithic era, discovered by either accidental cooking of water and cereal grains or by total accident, which many world changing discoveries are. Either way, it's discovery forever changed how man would survive harsh winters and scarcity of animals. Bread became and still is one of the most widely consumed foods in the world and throughout history.

Ahhh, remember the sweet small of grandma's kitchen? Would you like your kids to have that experience? Your kid's kids? Then this is the video series for you! Our expert, Johanshah Jomehri, is an pro at cooking and baking and here she walks you through every step you will need to know to bake your own loaf of beautiful, fluffy bread. She shows you all the ingredients you will need, expresses the importance of hand kneading the dough and even gives you ideas of what to do with the extra dough. Bagels, Cookies and many different kinds of bread are all covered in this series. Hey! No food fights! So go ahead... be the bread winner.

Video Transcript

"So, how do you know what kind of flour to pick? It all depends what kind of bread you want to make. If you want to make a heavy bread, such as sourdough, you would use a high gluten flour. If you want to make a soft bread like a Jewish egg bread, or a soft hamburger bun you would use a bread flour, and it all depends of the percentage of gluten in the flour. You can tell what type it is by feeling it, but by looking at it and the color of it you could kind of tell roughly what it is. The difference between the two flour; per se, bread flour and high gluten flour, is the percentage of gluten in it, which is building blocks of the bread. For cookies, and cakes and such, use even a less gluten flour that has about eight percent gluten in it which you want it to be extremely soft. That's what you use for the cookies; pastry flour. Is it on the label when you buy flours, the gluten level? Yes, you order that. You order, I want a high gluten level flour, and you order bread flour. High gluten has like thirteen percent gluten. Bread flour has about eleven percent gluten, and pastry flour or cake flour has about eight or nine, seven or eight, eight or nine percent. The good thing about the United States is that you can always get the flour that you want. Most of the nations aren't that fortunate. It's all seasonal, so you could go to a bakery at say summertime and get a really nice baguette, and go back there wintertime and get a lousy baguette because the flour is not there to build that bread the way it's supposed to be. If you're baking at home and you really want to produce something nice, you have to read these authentic books, and get real educated the flour, and learn what each flour does for you. That's the only way you can really optimize your production, and get something really nice out of your oven. Otherwise, it will be something that is mushy-mash and not expertly done."