Читать книгу Bread Matters: The sorry state of modern bread and a definitive guide to baking your own - Andrew Whitley - Страница 65

Flour is produced from a large number of wheat varieties, grown in different soils and climates (for other grains, see below). Millers select and blend different varieties and batches of grain to create flours for all purposes, from biscuits and cakes to bread and pasta. Unfortunately, there is no international classification system for flour, so it can be hard to grasp the different properties and uses denoted by a bewildering array of names and descriptions.

In order to make a judgement about the nutritional quality and likely baking performance of a flour, the home baker needs answers to the following questions:

 How was it milled? Stoneground for better retention of nutrients, or roller- milled?

 What is its ‘extraction rate’ – i.e. how brown is it?

 What is its protein content? What sort of a dough will it make? Strong and tight or soft and extensible?

If a flour has been stoneground, this will almost always be advertised on the bag since it is, rightly, deemed to be an advantage and therefore a selling point. The other two issues are more complicated.