What is Strong Flour?

Home baking is now a normal activity in many households. The manual part of bread making (mixing flours, kneading) is fascinating, but the main reason is that it is very easy to do the math: bake bread yourself rather than buying it at the supermarket, and you will save a lot of money.

In this article I will talk about wheat flour, the most used for breads all over the world. Historically, wheat is one of the first and most important cereals to be used by ancient civilizations. It first appeared almost 10000 years BC in the area in the Near East watered by rivers Tigris and Euphrates, called the Fertile crescent. Over the centuries, wheat started to be grown in other areas such as Europe and China. Worldwide, wheat is now produced for the most part in the European Union, mostly in Italy and France.

The seed (or kernel) of wheat is composed of three parts. The bran is the outer shell, and contains fibers and vitamins (especially B). The endosperm is a source for starch (a polysaccharide carbohydrate). The germ is small, but full of vitamin E and B and antioxidants. These three parts can be combined to obtain different kinds of flour.

White flour is produced from ground endosperm. Whole grain (also called wholemeal) flour is made grounding all three parts together. A particular type of wholemeal flour is called Graham flour, where the three parts are grounded separately (the endosperm more finely, and the bran and the germ more coarsely) then mixed back together. Germ flour is made from the endosperm plus the germ. Germ and bran can also be found alone as by-products of milling process. Germ is often used as supplement for athletes as an aid to gain muscle resistance, whereas bran is added to breads to enrich their fiber content.

The right flour for bread baking is “strong.” The strength of a flour depends on the content of gluten, a proteic complex composed of glutenin and gliadin. Gluten absorbs water up to 150% of its weight, and when the dough is left to rise, it withholds the CO2 produced by the yeast, giving bread its typical bubbly and spongy texture. If you have ever kneaded strong flour you will have noticed that the more you work it, the harder the dough gets. This is the flour’s strength. Gluten forms a kind of elastic coat, that can be stretched while kneading and holds its shape when baked.

The higher the protein content, the stronger the flour. Ideally, percentage of protein should be 15% but 12% is also fine. If the protein is below 10%, it means that the flour is “soft” and should be used to prepare cakes. Apart from bread, strong flour is also used to prepare Italian dishes like pizza, focaccia, and fresh pasta.