Difference Between Bleached And Unbleached Flour In Baking

Difference Between Bleached And Unbleached Flour In Baking – Flour is an important ingredient in baking and is used to make many different foods. For these reasons, it is a common base cabinet. These days, however, the variety of flours available on grocery store shelves continues to expand. What hasn’t changed, however, is the choice of bleached versus unbleached flour. So, what sets these two types apart and which one should you choose? Keep reading to find out.

Technically, all flour is bleached and reduced to fine particles by grinding in a mill. However, it is the aging process that distinguishes bleached from unbleached flour. Unbleached flour turns white as it ages. While bleached flour is treated with chemicals to speed up the aging process. Ultimately, the difference in processing means that each type of flour has its own unique texture and flavor profile.

Difference Between Bleached And Unbleached Flour In Baking

Although the use of each flour in baking is essentially the same, the differences in texture and color between the two flours can change the final product or baked product. This is why each flour can suit one roast over another.

Bleached Vs Unbleached Flour: What’s The Difference?

Bleached flour is treated with chemical agents, such as benzoyl peroxide or potassium bromate, to speed up its aging process. The rapid aging process affects the look and feel of the flour (its texture). For example, bleached flour is generally lighter in color and softer and lighter in texture. These characteristics are moderately reflected in the pastries made from this type of flour.

The unique characteristics of bleached flour make it a better choice for recipes that are slightly brighter in appearance, softer in texture, or bulky (bigger). This includes items such as pancakes, cookies and muffins. In terms of overall taste, some have also reported that due to the artificial processing of bleached flour it has a “chemical” or “bitter taste”.

Unbleached flour undergoes a natural aging process. As expected, the physical process takes longer and is more expensive. Indeed, bleached flour bypassed this long natural aging process. Without further processing, unbleached flour is generally whitish in color, less refined in grain and coarser in texture.

What’s The Difference Between Bleached And Unbleached Flour?

Unbleached flour has characteristics that make it the best choice for baked goods that require a strong base. For example, the texture of unbleached flour is coarser and denser than bleached flour. This is why unbleached flour is a good ingredient to use in products that depend on a firm structure, such as bread, pastries and desserts made from choux pastry.

No, processed flour is safe to eat. It is bleached using food safe additives. What we need to know though is that it takes on more “chemical involvement” than unprocessed flour.

Bleached flour is harmful to sourdough starters and any form of leavened dough. Chemically altered grain has the potential to kill the yeast and prevent the yeast from rising properly.

The Real Difference Between Bleached And Unbleached Flour

Chemical treatment is designed to speed up the aging process. The blanching process does not remove or kill bad bacteria, so you should avoid consuming raw yeast as you would unprocessed flour.

Ultimately, the choice to use either bleached or whole wheat flour is up to you based on personal preference, unless a recipe specifically calls for it. Bleached flour is treated with chemicals to speed up the aging process. It has a brighter color and a finer texture. Unbleached flour ages naturally and for a longer period of time. Because of this, it is often a bit more expensive in price. It also has an off-white color and a harder overall texture.

So while they are interchangeable in use, the properties between these two types of flour can make them better to use for some baked goods and recipes than others.

Bleached Vs Unbleached Flour: Which Is Best For Baking

In short, no matter what flour you use, your baked goods will still be delicious either way. That said, each flour will provide its own unique texture and flavor profile that will be evident when used in certain recipes. Only minor variations will be observed.

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It has happened to me a few times and I’m sure it has happened to everyone who bakes bread: For some mysterious reason a loaf that has always been reliable suddenly has a different feel to the dough and also a lower height than the baked bread.

Types Of Flour & When To Use Them

The slice on the left was made with Gold Medal “full force 12.7% protein whitened and bromated” flour, produced for the commercial market, purchased online in a 50# bag from The Baker’s Authority, expiration 3-2021. (See note below on bleached vs. unbleached.)

The slice on the right was made with Gold Medal unbleached all-purpose flour, about 11% protein, bought from the supermarket, expires 4-2022.

, I thought about it for several hours and then realized that it had to be the flour. I had been using the same Gold Medal all-purpose flour as always (and it even had an expiration date of 2022!) but something had changed. So I tried the flour along with a few other flours and yes—the gluten formed was relatively small.

All Purpose Flour Vs Bread Flour

) who taught me how to test for gluten and it’s so simple, especially if you have an accurate scale. What you want to do is link the two proteins: glutenin and gliadin, which require water and mixing to form gluten. (For more on gluten, see page 470 in

These are the test results comparing three flours and showing the gluten formed. General Mills Gold Medal Flour labeled “open” was what we had been using for several months with questionable results. The one on the right with the same expiration day we just opened.

The method for testing gluten content shown below in the first slide show: I added 10 grams of each flour to a small bowl and stirred 15 grams of water into each for 60 seconds. Now don’t be fooled by the thickness. Thicker means more starch and less protein.

Unbleached Vs. Bleached Flour—what’s The Difference?

This second presentation is the strained mixture with cold water running through it. All the starch is washed away and what remains is the gluten.

This shows how much more gluten is formed in King Arthur Unbleached All Purpose Flour (11.7% protein) versus the two bags of Gold Medal Unbleached All Purpose Flour. (I prefer a lower protein flour for soft white bread, but this batch of flour turned out to be too low.)

To confirm that the protein in this batch of Gold Medal flour was the culprit for the poor rise and that the commercial Gold Medal flour had more protein, I tested the commercial flour the same way as the others. it had more protein than supermarket Gold Medal flour but less than King Arthur and resulted in the usual high rise and soft texture.

Why The Flour You Bake With Matters

Flour with 12.7% protein, recommended for baking bread by professional and artisan bakers, which has a higher protein content than Better for Bread’s 12.3% flour.

It is clear that what is offered in the commercial establishments is different from what one finds in the supermarket and probably has protein fortification or something else to compensate for the bleaching. (Bleaching destroys some of the protein.) But why, oh why, bleach when all artisan bakers want unbleached? When it comes to baking, nothing is more important than flour. What kind of flour you use, how much, how hard or soft it is, how much protein it has and how it’s processed are all things that will affect the look, crumb and flavors of your baked goods. We didn’t always have access to all the different options we have today, but mankind has been making flour for centuries. Daisy Flour says there is evidence in the Upper Palaeolithic region of Europe that we have been producing flour for at least the last 30,000 years. Egyptians, Romans, Greeks and earlier civilizations found ways to make flour either by grinding it with a mortar and pestle or more advanced techniques like water mills.

Nowadays, it is more common to use steel rollers to grind our grains into useful and relatively cheap flour. And now that all types of flour are accessible in local and national grocery stores, we can experiment more with recipes than our ancestors had the opportunity to. The problem is that there are so many different types of flour prepared in so many different ways that new bakers can have a hard time spotting the differences between them.

What’s The Difference Between Bleached And Unbleached Flour?

One thing that many people wonder is whether there is a real difference between bleached and unbleached flour and whether they should use one over the other in certain recipes.

Most of us probably have bleached flour stored in our cupboards at home. Bleached flour is made by refining wheat (aka removing the bran and germ from the kernel and leaving only the endosperm), grinding it into the powder we know, and then treating it with chemicals (via Healthline). These chemicals are

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