above: the bread I baked at home just before the last sourdough class, which we ate with lunch.

I’ll be running more ‘hands-on’ sourdough bread making classes at Cookery School, Little Portland Street, London during 2012, and the first few dates are:

Saturday 28th January 2012 - SOLD OUT
Saturday 31st March 2012 - SOLD OUT
Saturday 26th May 2012

The classes will run from 9.00am to approximately 4.30pm, and will cover all the stages from making and keeping a healthy leaven through to the finished loaves coming out of the oven, with a special session devoted to shaping your dough to create that perfect effect. There is also time to talk about your baking with me, either over the traditional Cookery School lunch or at the end of the day, and to ask about any problems you may be having with your loaves.

These classes are suitable for a passionate beginner or someone with some experience of bread making who wants to refine and develop their skills, and we try to provide a fairly full day of practical bread making tuition. The location is not wheelchair accessible (one flight of stairs) and the class size is limited to 14 people.

All bookings should be made through Cookery School (email info@cookeryschool.co.uk or telephone 020 7631 4590), or email us if there’s anything you’d like to check before booking at info@danlepard.com

On Thursday December 1st, at 7:30 pm  I’ll be talking about baking and writing: about working in kitchens and how to survive in them without losing your mind, and how changing paths in life will invite new opportunities and ideas in. There will be sweet things I’ve baked for you to try, and everyone who buys a ticket – £25 per person – gets a signed copy of my book as well.

Space is very limited – hey, it’s a charity shop with only so much standing room - but equally it will be intimate with lots of time to ask David (my partner and the editor of Short & Sweet) or me questions, meet other people and help a charity that does brilliant work every day of the year.

To find out more and buy a ticket, call at the shop or contact:
Gill Perkins
Chief Executive
Wandsworth Oasis Trading Company Limited
via their website, at http://wandsworthoasis.org
or tel: 07970 349740

The event details:
when: December 1st 2011
where: Wandsworth Oasis, 17 Trinity Road, Tooting, SW17 7SD
time: 7:30pm – 9:30pm
venue telephone: 020 8682 9813

The tickets for each event are £15 per demonstration, including refreshments and £5 off the price of my new book “Short & Sweet”, a mammoth compendium on baking.
For tickets call Booka Bookshop on 01691 662244 or email mail@bookabookshop.co.uk
The demonstrations will be held at:
The Walls Restaurant,
Welsh Walls,
Oswestry,
Shropshire
SY11 1AW.

Ideally, come along to both sessions to get an intense top-up for your baking skills and understanding:

11am: Breadmaking – from easy breads to sourdough
In the morning I’ll start with explaining how you can easily customise a basic simple bread recipe – the sort that turns out crisp and light with a soft crumb, using everyday flour and little else – into something more elaborate using more unusual flours from mills like Little Salkeld, as well as how to add ingredients like onions, olives or herbs. Then we’ll look at different ways to get the crumb open and aerated, and I’ll explain how sourdough can help you achieve that. They’ll be lots of time for questions and do bring along you bread if you want help with it, or just reassurance. The morning is equally suited to absolute beginners as well as more experienced bakers, so bring along your questions as I’m sure we’ll answer or know where to look.

3pm: Cakemaking – soft cakes and delicious icing
Baking cakes that combine good looks with a soft moist crumb and a well-risen shape is a little tricky, but with a few secrets you’ll easily improve your favourite recipes and become more confident with your cake baking. I’ll explain how tweaks to the basic ingredients can dramatically improve the moistness and shape of your cakes made from your own recipes, and explain how different cake mixing techniques can be varied to, say, make a cake that slices better or keeps longer (yes, even the technique you use to mix the cake affects how long it keeps). I’ll explain about different ingredients affect the way icing performs, and look at how chocolate cakes can be both soft and rich with flavour. Again, suitable for beginners as well as more experienced cake bakers.

Tomorrow 18th October I’ll be at the Guildford Book Festival at the Electric Theatre, 12:30, talking about baking, books and getting the most from both: what to look for when you’re buying a baking book, how to choose one that will suit the baking you have in mind, and of course how to get the flavours and textures in the breads, cakes and cookies that you bake that seem a little elusive. I’ll be answering all your questions and wont rush away at the end. For further details go to the www.guildfordbookfestival.co.uk page about the talk. It’s a bargain at £6 and will leave you much more confident in your baking and with more tips to dazzle your friends with.

Then next Sunday 23rd October, up in Durham at the Palace Green (next to the beautiful Durham Cathedral and Durham Castle) at 12 midday I’ll be talking about bread, sourdough, and getting the perfect crust and crumb in your bread. Give me a nudge and I’ll get onto cakes and Christmas planning, but whatever baking you’re into we’ll have the answer. The event will be as much about exploring your own baking ideas and successes, and getting everyone exchanging ideas. One big mixing bowl of baking ideas. Even better: the talk is free. Just bring yourselves, something warm if this winter weather gets to us sooner than expected, and enjoy some of the baking from the Palace Green Café. For further details go to www.durhambookfestival.com.

See you there!

The Eden Project details: Britain’s most respected and extraordinary ecological “dreamland” in Cornwall, The Eden Project is hosting a Harvest Food Festival, in part organised by Clive Cobb from The Town Mill Bakery with the aim to inspire baking in Britain and reconnect visitors with the seasons in grain growing and farming. I’ll be showing how to develop a sourdough, get that loaf light and aerated (you’ll never make a doorstop loaf again, I promise), and then use those slow and gentle baking techniques on everyday baking with simple yeast bread. The session runs from 3pm until 4pm, utterly free once you’ve paid your entrance to the Eden Project, and a lovely way to break you visit that afternoon. I will be there from lunchtime that day, so if you get there early do say hello. Absolutely looking forward to it.

Waterstone’s Piccadilly details: We’re going all chocolate on Thursday 6th October at the mighty Waterstone’s bookshop in London’s Piccadilly, easy to get to as it’s just by Piccadilly Circus tube station. I’ll de demonstrating how to get your chocolate brownies to hold a dense fudgy texture, keep the crumb of your chocolate cakes soft with a “just-baked” texture, explain why some forms of chocolate are better than others in baking, and guide you on where to spend and what to save on with baking: some ingredients just aren’t worth the price in some recipes. The evening is just £6 with a glass of wine (or something lighter if you want that), and plenty of time to ask you questions and get the most from the evening. For more info and booking either telephone 020 7851 2419 or go to the Waterstone’s website.

There’s also the issue of working with authentic stone-milled flour, that has a coarser texture that the more typical roller milled type. There are ways I’ll discuss that will help you get a dough that’s easier to shape with a good crumb structure from real stone-milled flour, and ways to combine it with roller milled flour so that you still capture the strong flavour and colour of the artisan milled type.

Simply, anyone who wants call themselves as an artisan baker can’t honestly do so without using at least some flour from a traditional cornmiller…otherwise you’re just hiding behind factory ingredients hoping no-one will notice. It’s time to come out and support the traditional mills that will help you make the best bread.

Saturday 16th April 2011,
The NFU Mutual’s HQ,
Tiddington Road,
Stratford-Upon-Avon,
Warwickshire CV37 7BJ
Tickets: £50, in aid of The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings
I’ll be speaking at 12:00 midday, in a session called “The Baker’s Tale”
Download a pdf booking form here

or go to www.spab.org.uk for more information

Now up to this point I’d only dabbled at coffee drinking. Back in Melbourne, Mum had her small jar of Nescafe, and sometimes I’d put a quarter teaspoon in a cup with lots of milk and boiling water, which turned the milk beige, and the flavour slightly caramel. I still enjoy Nescafe but I don’t think of it as coffee.

So when Vern asked, “you do drink coffee, don’t you?” I said yes. Thinking that the appearance of confidence would hide the fact that I was young and unsophisticated. And I worried that if I said no I wouldn’t get the chance to drink it again, ever. The first mouthful, after saying no to sugar, was the most extreme thing I’d ever swallowed. I crossed a line into gastronomic adulthood, and there was no turning back.

Fresh ginger coffee cake

Alongside chocolate and vanilla, coffee is one of the central flavours used by pastry chefs and home cooks when they want an all-round winner that few will object to. In England, the coffee and walnut cake made by stirring instant coffee powder or the chicory-based Camp Coffee into the cake batter has become the definitive cake to expect in National Trust tea-rooms. In the US I think about coffee icing on donuts, or drizzled over the top of a mocha chocolate muffin. In France I think of Religieuses au Café or a simple coffee eclair. In Australia we had coffee scrolls, much like cinnamon buns with a sweet coffee fondant spooned over the top. But for all of these, the coffee element was a little cheap and cheerful, more about a beige colour and a little bitterness to offset the sugary sweetness.

So what about ramping the coffee flavour up a little, so that it matches some of the intensity of a good espresso? I wondered what the best bold-flavoured coffees were, ones that could withstand abuse from other flavour-contorting substances. Sugar softens the bitterness and causes some coffees to lose their edge. Spices can mask any inherent natural spiciness the bean has. And when the coffee is infused into a hot cup of liquid, how do you then keep the flavour?

For all my love of coffee, I really don’t understand the nuances of the varieties available, so I asked Daniel Young at youngandfoodish.com whose book Coffee Love (Wiley, 2009) looks at recipes and flavours from a globe-hopping vantage point.

The first trick, according to Daniel Young, is to know where your coffee bean originates. “Basically there are three coffee producing regions,” says Daniel, “that cover a large area around the world. You have the Americas, including South and Central America. Then you have East Africa. And finally Asia and Pacific.”

“The South Asian coffees tend to be the biggest bodied and most intense. But I would actually think more about the character of the coffee and how it’s roasted to decide how it’s going to hold up and marry. Bitterness and acidity are general characteristics, but I think aroma and flavour are very important for pastry chefs and I find that the coffees they go for do display vivid aroma and flavour characteristics.”

“For example”, says Daniel, “if you look at Brazil - and don’t mind if I’m very general about this (as flavours can vary even from farm to farm) – you often find Brazilian coffee has a clear chocolately note to the flavour and would marry well with chocolate. There’s a Brazilian coffee called Fazenda Rainha that has a sweet chocolate character, while in coffees like the Finca La Fany (from El Salvador) or the Finca San Francisco (from Guatemala) you generally get less bitterness and a flavour with some notes of milk chocolate and caramel to it. Then you might even detect a citrus element that cuts through that caramel, and a toffee sweetness. The El Salvador coffees can have notes of cherries or sweet oranges naturally occurring, like in the Finca Los Planes -  the inherent flavours are perfect “little recipes” within the bean.”

“Now you can’t just go to the supermarket to buy these coffees,” says Daniel, “but that’s part of the adventure. In the UK there is an online supplier called Hasbean.co.uk that has a great selection available, or squaremilecoffee.com or Monmouth Coffee’s stores.”

Getting every last drop of flavour

No matter what coffee you use, getting the most flavour from it is important. So when you start playing with expensive estate beans then you start to want your money’s worth.

1. Instant coffee

When I want a simple and slight caramel coffee flavour to an icing on a cake, dissolving a tablespoon of instant coffee in the same amount of hot water does the trick. Especially if I’m mixing it with some finely grated lemon zest or cinnamon.
Good for: simple coffee cookies, basic water icing, wherever a background coffee flavour is needed

2. Freshly ground coffee

My rule is that if the cake, cookie or biscuit has a slightly rough and coarse texture, then you can directly add ground coffee to the mixture. So if the cake has ground walnuts through it, or flakes of bran, or semolina or ground rice: go for it. But if the mixture is soft and evenly textured then coffee grounds will destroy that delicacy. Having said that, I really like adding coffee grounds to a cake mix.
Good for: coarse-textured cakes or cookies, or when the varied ingredients disguise exactly what is in the mixture.

3. Intense espresso coffee

By espresso I mean an almost viscous cup of about 30ml of intense coffee ‘resin’ made from ground coffee, not a spoonful of anything instant labelled “espresso”. The trick here is to use it in place of water or milk in a recipe, or I use it in place of one of the egg whites in a two-egg cake mixture. You can make a syrup with it just by stirring in a little caster sugar, or even add Marsala for a tiramisu edge.
Good for: making into a syrup and brushing on the layers of a cake, or pouring over the well-skewered top of a cake.

Note: Daniel Young told me about cold-infusing coffee, by simply leaving the grounds in room-temperature water or milk for 24 hours then straining and pressing the liquid through muslin. Very curious to try this, and will report back how it goes.

4. Filter coffee

Usually there is too much water in filter coffee for it to be much use, except when it comes to bread baking. Here, all that water is perfect, especially if you want a slight hint of coffee to a raisin bread recipe, or in a chocolate-flavoured yeast dough. If you replace the water for milk in a cafetière you could use that as well.
Good for: any recipe where water or liquid makes up a large proportion of the ingredients.

In my kitchen there will always be bags of rye wholemeal flour and wheat wholemeal flour (the latter is usually called “wholewheat flour”) in the cupboard because I’ll use them, in some proportion, in most of the recipes I bake. I hold back a little in published recipes because of space and to avoid everyone having to always do what I do. Most recipes work well using just white flour. It’s just that I believe those recipes are often better if some of the white flour is replaced with a wholemeal equivalent.

Most recipes, not all. If delicacy and a smooth texture are an important characteristic then adding wholemeal flour will degrade that. A Victoria sponge or delicate génoise can taste like sawdust was mixed in, and turn out heavier. Chocolate cake, with a soft light crumb, turns weirdly stodgy and slightly bitter. And shortbread turns into an oily digestive biscuit.

However, for most baking you can substitute up to a quarter of the white flour in the recipe with wholemeal flour without causing a drastic difference in the texture, while gaining a boost to the flavour.

Health benefits? The medical and scientific community are divided on this one. On the plus side, using wholemeal flour will aid digestion for some people. Eating wholemeal flour is not quite the same as eating whole grains, as the milling process makes more of the starch available during digestion and this can still spike your blood sugar. However, gram for gram, the will be less starch and simple sugars in wholemeal flour compared to white flour simply because the bran makes up some of the weight. Adding cooked or sprouted whole grains (rolled oats are cooked and dried, so they count) to your wholemeal flour is the best way to increase the health benefits.

The germ of the whole grain found in wholemeal flour is another plus. Cereal ‘germ’ mustn’t be confused with the other use of the word in relation to bacteria. This germ is good, an absolute plus for our health. The word ‘germ’ in cereal science refers to the part of the plant that germinates, and contains important oils rich in vitamins, as well as folic acid and trace minerals that help our cells function.

The minus side largely depends whether or not cereal bran suits our digestion. Some people have difficulty digesting cereal bran easily, so encountering it in their diet isn’t a good thing. There is some evidence that wheat bran lowers the absorption of zinc via our digestion. Also, though additional nutrients exist that are locked in the bran and listed when the healthy attributes of wholemeal flour are written about, some of these minerals and phyto-nutrients aren’t released during digestion. There is some evidence that a long slow acidic process, like the sourdough or leaven method of bread baking, can release these micronutrients but no conclusive study has been done.

So before you jump on the wholemeal bread is the best for health wagon, it won’t take the place of a varied diet rich in vegetables and other wholegrain foods.

General issues to remember using wholemeal flour

1. The bran in wholemeal flour absorbs means it absorbs more moisture, weight for weight, than white flour. So expect mixtures or dough to be a little drier, and think about adding a little more liquid to compensate.
2. The germ of the wholegrain found in wholemeal flour can turn rancid, so don’t keep wholemeal flour for longer than 6 months, and try to use it up quickly. If you need to keep it longer, store it in an airtight container in the freezer.
3. Adding wholemeal flour effectively lowers the gluten, the stretchy resilient characteristic in wheat flour dough, as the bran makes up part of the weight. So don’t expect cakes to rise as high, or dough to stretch as far without breaking, or yeast dough to rise as high before baking.

For cakes, save for a few recipes at the beginning, I usually call for plain flour plus baking powder. But what about the flours that already have the raising agent included?

cheese scones should be light and meltingly soft inside

Self-raising (or self-rising) and soda flours: the essentials

These flours are a curious mix as they vary according to the predicted uses the miller thinks you’ll find them for. So, being the creative bakers we are, we sometimes find that we need to add a little more raising agent to them, or dilute them with plain or bread flour, in order to get just the result we need.

A bag of self-raising flour will contain wheat flour, the type depends on the use the miller suggests, an acid – in commercial flours and baking powder it’s usually a monocalcium phosphate sometimes mixed with disodium pyrophosphate as they’re inexpensive, whereas at home we use the more expensive cream of tartar – and an alkali – bicarbonate of soda. In the US, salt is often added to ‘self-rising’ flour.

For the flour base, it’s usually a mixture of very soft, low protein wheat varieties that are milled or flour blended and this produces a soft texture to the crumb. So when you’re buying and using self-raising flour, remember that it’s milled to suit gentle mixing and handling. So go easy on that scone dough, don’t go tearing and ripping at it, and you’ll find the resulting scone will be much lighter and delicate that way.

Irish soda flours, which contain bicarbonate of soda and wheat flour, produce superior soda bread and, for some, even better cakes and scones. Though they’re very difficult to buy in England, there are many pastry chefs I know of that import Irish soda flour to use for their cakes and traybakes as the tender soft texture produced with it is superb.

Sponge or Superfine self-raising flours: the essentials

These flours can’t simply be imitated by mixing plain flour with baking powder. Here, the millers have chosen a mixture of soft wheat varieties, then ensured the bolting or sifting used after milling is extra fine so that it can be folded through the cake mixture easily, and it may possible be heat-treated during milling to help it hold the crumbs structure when mixed with high levels of butter and sugar. Now, although these flours do produce an extra fine and delicate crumb, I feel they lack flavour and tends to produce a crumb that’s reminiscent of a mass-produced industrial process.

Bleached cake flours: In the UK, cake flours, and to some extent bread flour, was once bleached – either by forcing gas through the flour, or by adding powders – to improve the colour, increase the acidity and, in turn, increase the volume of the cake or loaf the flour was used to make. Though flour bleaching by chemical methods has been banned in the EU since the mid 1990s (1996 in the UK), it’s still allowed in the US and helps produce the extraordinary texture of those great American layer cakes.

Self-raising (or self-rising) and soda flours: what to expect using it

As the chemical raising agents are included in the flour, the leavening starts from the moment you add moisture. So the more you stir, knead, spoon or shape the mixture, the more leavening will be lost.

Think of a chemical reaction occurring the moment the flour and the liquid combine; the more you move it through mixing the sooner the aerating power is lost. Recipes that contain a small proportion of liquid, like a cake mixture, are less volatile, whereas recipe with a high level of liquid, like a scone or a muffin, are more volatile.

The time that passes from adding the flour until the mixture is used is also a factor. Since it takes time for most of the soda to react and create gas, if you leave the mixture once combined, and then say 10 minutes later come back and give it another stir “for luck” or whatever you’ll risk the cake not being very light at all.

Biscuits and cookies: as they usually contain very little liquid and require only a little chemical leavening, you can leave the mixture at room temperature for 2 – 3 hours, or in a fridge for a few days, and only loose a little of the leavening power. But try not to overwork the mixture, scoop what you need, roll or press gently onto the tray and bake. If you prefer to keep the mixture in blocks or rolls, then shape the mixture quickly, wrap it well then chill or freeze. Simply slice what you need from the block and lay the disks of cookie dough on the paper lined tray.

Butter-rich cakes, cupcakes, brownies and tray-bakes: Add any liquid, like milk or water, towards the end of mixing, or alternate adding it with the flour. Any flour added just before or after this should be folded through or beaten in quickly until just combined. If the mixture is made ahead of baking, either spoon it after mixing into the tray and bake when ready, or keep chilled and gently spoon into the tray or tin just before baking.

Scones, soda breads and muffins: For the lightest result, the mixture should be quite soft and paste-like, and shaped quickly after mixing. Scones can be frozen once cut before baking, but need to be completely defrosted before baking. Muffin mixture can be kept in the refrigerator overnight, but should be gently spooned without stirring into the paper cases before baking. Some cooks prefer to whisk an egg white and fold this through the chilled muffin mixture the following day to ensure the muffin has a light texture.

Batters: for the lightest result, use plain or all-purpose flour (or a mixture of potato or corn starch, and plain or all-purpose flour), leave for 2 – 6 hours to mature then beat in the baking powder just before using.

Replacing self-raising (or self-rising) flour, with plain flour plus baking powder, or cream of tartar and bicarbonate of soda: You can’t be exact about this as it will depend on the other ingredients and the amount of liquid in the cake, but a good starting point is:
225g plain flour plus 2 tsp baking powder, or 1 1/3 tsp cream of tartar and 2/3 tsp bicarbonate of soda.

There’s a thread on our forum about home baker Jack Lang’s exceptional baguettes made with plain flour, and over on moneysavingexpert.com there’s a thread about using low grade flour for a great result. So when forum member Blue posted recently asking about strong white flour I thought it’s time to start unravelling the mysteries. As I started writing this I’ve realised that it will be the first in a series, as there is so much to explain about the flours we use.

If you have any specific tips you’ve been using do post and let us know.

This week: plain white flour and strong white flour

Plain white flour: the essentials

Plain flour refers to a relatively low-protein white wheat flour that has no particular attributes. Because of this it can also be of a poor or variable quality, as it isn’t required to meet any general industry criteria. One technical director of a large milling company told me the believed much of the plain flour sold was rubbish; my view is that there is always a characteristic in any flour that can be used in a good way, and the trick is to identify it. I tend to go for a branded plain flour or larger supermarket own-label (not the value range) as these larger companies usually set specific in-house criteria and put their suppliers through a few hoops to meet them.

Plain flour: what to expect using it

Plain flour will produce a bread dough that will not tolerate long fermentation without falling apart, and will produce a dense soft crumb that tears easily. The addition of a small amount of Vitamin C (1/2 x 250mg tablet crushed per 500g plain flour) produces a dough that will hold gas better, producing a lighter crumb, and roll and shape easier, and is helpful if you’ve run out of strong white flour and need to use plain flour as a replacement.

Best for: buns, soft rolls, griddle-baked flat breads or pita

In cake making, it will produce a soft texture that tends towards crumbling. Fruit cakes will slice better without crumbing, and cookies will bake chewier, if you use a mixture of a strong white flour (see below) and plain flour in the recipe.

Best for: batters, scones, biscuits and pound/Victoria sponge type cakes of a UK style.

Plain Flour: what to replace it with

Using Italian 00 instead of plain flour: If baking powder is used reduce it slightly. By the way, Italian 00 produces a lovely light scone.

Using plain flour instead of Italian 00: in breadmaking, use a mixture of half strong white (see below) and half plain flour, but the dough produced will not be as stretchy and extensible. 00 produces a much crisper result that can’t be imitated with either flour. In cake making use slightly more baking powder but no other changes

Using UK plain flour instead of US all-purpose flour: US recipes will often have a higher sugar/butter ratio to flour and stress UK plain flour too much. Reducing the butter/sugar in the US recipe will help to produce a better result with plain flour. Also, I find a slight increase in the baking powder helps to produce a lighter result with plain flour. In yeast baking, a combination of strong white flour and baking powder

Using US all-purpose flour instead of UK plain flour: If the baking powder in the UK seems high decrease it slightly, and increase the liquid in the recipe slightly as all-purpose flour is selected/milled so it will hold slightly more moisture during mixing.

Using French T45 or T55 (Euro T450 or T550) instead of plain flour: French millers produce flour with the expectation that it will colour quickly in the oven and, in breadmaking, can sustain a longer rise than UK. So slightly reduce the sugar and fat, and reduce the liquid in the recipe by 10% – 15% for the best result.

Using plain flour in place of French T45/T55 (Euro T450/T550): In cake baking, replacing 1/4 of the flour with strong flour will produce a better result, and yeast baking the addition of a little vitamin C will produce a lighter and more elastic dough. Increase the liquid in the recipe very slightly.

Strong white flour: the essentials

Strong white flour refers to a relatively high-protein white wheat flour suitable for breadmaking. As virtually all flour is milled from a selection of grain varieties, rather than the grain from a single field or single variety, for strong white flour millers choose a selection of wheat varieties to that will produce a dough that most bakers make: in the UK, that is a tight commercially-yeasted dough that is risen quickly, shapes easily without flowing, and bakes to a pale crust without over-colouring. This of these qualities as the key characteristics that strong flour is milled to produce, as it’s then easier to tweak and troubleshoot your way to a perfect loaf.

Strong white flour isn’t our traditional British wheat flour, but was introduced in the late 1800s by combining imported either Hungarian, Australian, US or Canadian wheats in order to create a flour that could withstand the rigours of machine dough processing, and since it soon dominated our markets even small bakers adapted their methods in an attempt to soften this tough flour.

Most strong white flour in the UK is roller milled, and so I often buy generic and whatever’s the best value. Sometimes that’s a branded flour from Hovis or Allinsons, other times it’s from Lidl. Though I like stoneground white bread flours I don’t really consider them “strong white flour” as the bran they contain slightly softens the crumb and gives a different look and taste to what I’d expect from roller milled flour. So I treat stoneground white bread flour like a light wholemeal flour, and I’ll cover this area in more detail next time.

Extra-strong flour is wheat flour has even more of this resilient protein than strong flour, and is very useful when mixed with rye or wholewheat flour in order to improve the round shape of the final loaf. But otherwise, it’s usually more than you need for typical home baking.

Strong white flour: what to expect using it

Strong white flour usually contains high levels of a type of protein called glutenin, causing the dough made from it to be able to hold its shape rather better than stretching easily. Where dough made from an Italian 00 flour or French T55 can be pulled and lengthened easily, dough made from strong white flour needs to be coaxed gently into performing a similar act otherwise it will tear. Though strong white flour will contain gliadin, the stretchy protein, don’t expect the same extensibility with dough made from it. However, high speed mixing, especially with the additional of a crushed vitamin C tablet, will produce a very elastic and stretchy dough from this flour.

Best for: dough that requires good oven spring, and tight shapes. Breads that need to stay moist and soft for a few days, as the protein absorbs moisture and avoids it drying quickly.

Sometimes you need to add a little malt or sugar to strong white flour to sustain a long fermentation. The biggest market for strong white flour in the UK is for bakers – at home and in bakeries – making dough that is risen and baked fairly quickly. Because of this, the millers choose a selection of wheat varieties that don’t contain very high levels of natural sugar as they won’t be used up during a short fermentation and could both leave the crumb gummy and heavy, and cause the crust to brown too quickly. And in the UK, pale bread has a strong fan club. Now curiously, the glutenin found in strong white flour is perfect for long fermentation but…as the natural sugars in the flour are kept low, the resulting loaf will have a pale greyish crust, look slightly anaemic, and the final rise will be lengthy. If you add a little malt or even dark ale to the mix the additional “sugar” in the form of maltose will help to correct this.

Best for: short (2-3 hr) to medium (4 – 6 hr) fermentation; beyond that consider adding additional malt or sugar to sustain the fermentation.

Even the best strong white flours are remarkable bland, so think about cutting this flour with a little wholemeal flour to deepen the flavour. You can happily replace up to 10% of the weight with wholemeal flour without affecting the texture or appearance greatly.

Best use: when cut with a little wholemeal flour it produces an exceptionally well-flavoured bread. Otherwise, consider increasing the flavour of fermentation or the other ingredients used.

For cakes with a high level of fat, like a buttery pound cake, strong white flour can be uses in place of plain flour without it being too noticeable. In fact, if you have a cake that tends to crumble, then using strong white flour should correct this. You might need to add a little liquid to achieve the same consistency, but you’ll have to judge this for yourself. I find strong white flour gives a very good result when used for rich fruit cakes or gingerbread. It’s less good used in a sponge cake, or other low fat cake.

Best for: fruit cakes and gingerbreads.

For biscuits and traybakes, strong white flour instead of of plain flour usually produces a good to very good result.

Best for: biscuits etc that requires a chewy soft consistency.

Strong white flour: what to replace it with

Using Italian 00 instead of strong white flour: in breadmaking, reduce the liquid in the recipe by 15% 20%, and reduce the rising temperature to about 21C  – 24C.

Using strong white flour instead of Italian 00: in breadmaking, use a mixture of half strong white and half plain flour, but the dough produced will not be as stretchy and extensible. Increase the water slightly to help make the dough more elastic. 00 produces a much crisper result that can’t be imitated with either flour. In cake making use slightly more baking powder and slightly more liquid, but no other changes.

Using UK strong white flour instead of US all-purpose flour: For breadmaking just add a little extra liquid when making the dough, otherwise no changes needed.

Using US all-purpose flour instead of UK strong white flour: For breadmaking, use slightly less water than suggested in the recipe.

Using French T55 or T65 (Euro T550 or T650) instead of strong white flour: Reduce the liquid in the recipe by 10% – 15%, and reduce the rising temperature to about 21C  – 24C for the best result. As T55 or T65 will colour quickly in the oven, reduce the oven temperature towards the end of baking to stop it burning.

Using strong white flour in place of French T55 or T65 (Euro T550 or T650): In bread baking increase the dough temperature slightly, and for long shapes roll the dough out in stages to avoid tearing it. Consider adding a little malt or sugar if you intend to extend the rising time beyond 6 hours. Expect the crust to be slightly tougher and chewy, and less brittle and crisp, when using strong white flour in place of T55 or T65.