Strong, wholemeal, rye, spelt. What the protein figure means, which bag does which job, and how to store flour without it going stale.
Flour is not a generic white powder. The bag in front of you might be strong, weak, stoneground, bleached, old or damp, and each of those things changes the bread. Learning a few plain differences is more useful than any recipe, because it lets you choose rather than guess.
Read the label properly
Protein percentage is the number that matters for bread. Anything around twelve to thirteen per cent is strong enough to build a proper dough. Ten per cent is a soft flour for cakes and pastry. Stoneground wholemeal carries the bran and germ with it, which brings flavour and cuts the gluten network short. None of these are better or worse in the abstract; they are tools for different jobs.
Ignore the word artisan on the front. Look at the back for the protein figure, the milling date and the variety of wheat. A bag with no variety and no date is a gamble.
Strong white
This is the workhorse. It makes an elastic dough, a light crumb and a crisp crust. Buy it fresh, in quantities you will use within a couple of months, and store it cool and dry. A bag that has sat in a warm cupboard since last winter will still make bread, but the rise will be tired and the flavour flat.
Keep a small bag of the cheapest strong white for everyday loaves and save the expensive stoneground stuff for the bread you eat on its own.
Wholemeal and its bran
Wholemeal adds a nutty depth that white flour cannot. It also acts like small blades in the dough, so use it at thirty to fifty per cent and give the dough a longer rest before you start folding. Sift out the coarsest bran if the crumb is too tight, and scatter it on the top of the loaf instead.
Wholemeal absorbs more water than white and gives it up slowly. Add an extra five per cent water and be patient; the dough will feel stiffer than it looks.
Rye and spelt
Rye is sticky, low in gluten and superb in a blend. Spelt is softer and more extensible than wheat, with a sweet, grassy flavour; treat it gently and keep it under a third of the total flour. Both are worth buying in small bags from a shop with a decent turnover.
They also date quickly. Buy week by week if you can, and smell the bag before you tip it in. Fresh rye smells malty. Old rye smells of a cupboard.
Buying and storing
Buy the smallest bag that covers a month. Decant into an airtight tub, label it with the date, and keep it out of sunlight. Wholemeal goes rancid faster than white because of the oils in the germ; keep it in the fridge if you bake slowly. If flour smells of paint or old paper, it will taste that way in the loaf. Keep a dry scoop in the tub, never a wet one, and label the mill and the date, not just the flour type.
Mills vary enormously, and so do the seasons. A flour that needs one amount of water in June may want another in December. Adjust the dough, not the bag, and buy from the same mill while you learn its habits. The plainest flour, handled well, makes better bread than an expensive one handled badly, and a cheap loaf you actually bake beats a perfect bag you keep saving.