Flour
Types of flour, brands of flour, tradwives, and a plea to branding companies to revisit vintage flour bags.
This post is similar to my salt crusade, because flour is almost as ubiquitous as salt in our kitchen. Just like salt, flour deserves to be of the upmost quality. Life is too short to be buying cheap, highly processed flour, even if you don’t bake. I don’t mean to be snooty or pretentious, but oftentimes I get a client that raves about their baking or bread skills and then later find out they’re using Medal Gold AP. I hope I haven’t offended anyone… yet.
Not only does high quality flour give you a better product, it’s better for you. I don’t have the qualifications to explain the scientifically proven reasons why American flour is total crap and potentially causing major health problems to our bodies, but it’s safe to say we do no have high standards of production here in the US. Therefore we must be more selective in our consumption. Most grocery stores carry many brands of flour, all you have to do is pick the right one.
Should we change the name of all-purpose flour to “most-purposes flour”?
All-purpose flour is the flour most of you reading this are buying 99% of the time. It’s what most recipes call for. The protein content should sit around 10-11-ish percent, and if you don’t know what that means, just ignore. I say “most-purposes” because there are times you need to use a different type of flour with a higher or lower protein content (more on this later).
Here are some of the brands I use and have used in the past. But not just me, these brands are used among some of my favorite chefs, recipe developers, and even some restaurants.
King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose
Widely available at most grocery stores and big box stores. The protein content is high enough to make bread, but not too high to make dense cakes. Pizza master Marc Vetri suggests using King Arthur in his books and also uses it in his restaurants. King Arthur flour is unbleached and unbromated. You can also get organic ap too.
Central Milling Company Organic All-Purpose Flour
This is my preferred flour of choice when I can find it. Central Milling Co is from Logan Utah and is world renowned. It can be ordered online or purchased at a Harmon’s grocery store if you’re an Utah local. Costco used to sell their un-organic Red Rose All-Purpose, but discontinued stocking it in 2022. However, there are talks on Reddit that Kirkland’s brand of organic all-purpose is Central Milling Co rebranded. I yet to find evidence of this, but the bag says it comes from Utah. Hmmm. I use this flour too and it’s also a great choice.
Ordering your flour online is definitely a bit “extra”. But is it really? We live and breathe with e-commerce, so why not order some special flour while you’re at it.
Bob's Red Mill Unbleached White All-Purpose Baking Flour
Another good option that is widely available at stores across the country and online.
Are you even a #tradwife if you don’t use bread flour?
The year is 2020 and you’re stuck at home. Maybe you dabbled in the dark arts of tradwifery and grew a sourdough starter. Then all the sudden you started Tik Toking your stretch and folds in your Cleobella smock. If this is the case, you should definitely be familiar with bread flour. (This is a joke)
In short, bread flour typically has higher protein content than all-purpose making it ideal for baked goods that need a lot of gluten structure and flavor profiles i.e. bread. I use bread flour for my country loaves (also known as sourdough) and my pizza dough. Sure, I could buy special 00 flour for my pizza and another type for my bread, but I’m all about simplicity. Bread flour makes great bread and if you at all dabble in the dark art, you should have some.
Side note: Why has sourdough become synonymous with 'tradwives'? This drives me crazy. So much so, I have vowed to stop referring to my sourdough bread as 'sourdough' and instead call it by its more appropriate term, 'country loaf'. Why does this matter? I find the themes of tradwifery too problematic to be associated with my precious and delicious bread. People have been making naturally leavened bread for thousands of years— they were not tradwives. I digress.
Central Milling Co Organic Bread Flour - Malted:
I used to think malted flour was less superior when baking artisan things, but I was mistaken when I started using this flour. It creates amazing bread, pizza, and puff pastry. I sometimes see this bread in the wild when traveling at bakeries and pizzerias. Sometimes bakeries leave their bags of flour stacked so you can see them and a lot of times it’s Central Milling Co. This is an invitation to go flour scavenger hunting.
The others.
I don’t use Kamut flour.
No judgment if you do, I just don’t. That’s all I have to say about that.
Whole Wheat & Rye Flour
As I mentioned above in my short tradwife rant, I prefer to call my sourdough bread 'country loaves'. One characteristic of a country loaf is that it usually includes whole wheat or rye in the formula. To keep this short and sweet, whole wheat and rye flour produce more lactic acid during the fermentation process, resulting in a more flavorful bread. However, these flours tend to go rancid more quickly than others, so I prefer not to keep a lot on hand. I opt to buy King Arthur whole wheat and organic rye at the grocery store to keep costs and convenience down.
If you haven’t tried adding a little whole wheat or rye to your bread yet, I suggest you do so!
Why is flour branding so boring these days?
A lot of the companies mentioned above have recently gone through a rebranding. I assume to make their brand more modern and hip, but most of them have come out so flat and boring (in my opinion). You can see this from the flour bag photos I’ve posted above.
I recently stumbled upon old flour bags on the internet and I’m obsessed. Similar to vintage rice bags, look how cool these are! So bright with amazing fonts and graphics. I feel like each bag tells a story. If flour bag today look like this, they wouldn’t leave my counter.
What’s not cool are the racist ones. I mean, if you can’t see why this is problematic, I don’t know what else to say. I’m looking at you Aunt Jemima defenders. It’s also worth noting that King Arthur’s rebrand comes in a timely matter as they got rid of their old crusader logo. We won’t get into that, but if you know anything about history and what’s going on in the Middle East, you can see why they chose to go in a different direction. You can read more about that here.
Have I missed anything? If so, I will update this post. My apologies if I have offended anyone. This post is flooded with my personal opinions, but hey, it’s my Substack. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any specific questions about flour, a product, a bread recipe, etc.
Love,
Kayla