PANARY

Craft baking courses, wood-fired ovens, and consultancy

  • Home
  • Courses
    • Baking Courses
    • Apprentice Days
    • 1 Day Courses
    • 2 Day Courses
    • 3 Day Courses
    • Residential
    • Accommodation
  • Watermill
  • Gift vouchers
  • Blog
    • Blog
    • Newsletters
    • Bakers’ Topics
  • Contact
  • Course Calendar
  • Buy Our Bread
  • Fees
    • Fees
    • Accommodation
  • Wood Fired Ovens
  • Consultancy
  • About
    • About
    • Testimonials

Flour too strong?

27th April 2017 by Paul Merry


We all know the benefit of good quality bread flour, which has a protein strength sufficient to make robust gluten that assures the baker a well risen and handsome loaf. This is what we know to expect in typical English bread flour. However, there are occasions when the strength of the gluten in strong bread flour will undermine what you are setting out to do.
Take, for example, the Danish pastries shown here in the photo – the type based on the folded square. They were made on my recent Patisserie – Viennoiserie course. When the flour is too strong, the folded sides unfold again when they are proving, or when they meet the shock of the oven. The gluten has not become totally relaxed and its propensity to be elastic has defeated your purpose as the pretty folded envelopes unfold to become failed flat things with their filling totally exposed.

The solution is two-fold: (i) weaken the flour by adding a good portion of plain flour to the bread flour; (ii) complete the making of the slab of Danish pastry many hours before you are going to use it, and let it sit in the refrigerator to relax fully.

In both the above solutions you are employing a tactic to beat the component of the gluten in the bread flour that gives it elasticity, wherein lies its strength and firm pull. By parking it in the fridge overnight after completing all the folds and laminations, it will have many hours to relax, and there will be less elasticity, less risk of the square shapes opening out.
The solution (i) is also achieved by simply learning about all the flours available on the market so that you have flours of weaker protein (and gluten of course) in your store. Flours of merely 10-11% protein will often suit your purpose, and imported European flours are suitable because their characteristics feature more pronounced extensibility of gluten rather than powerful elasticity and strength.

This discussion centred around Danish pastries is echoed when you think about pizza. I always get the students at PANARY to add plain flour to the strong bread flour when they are making pizzas all in one morning session (meaning they are not able to be parked in the fridge for 12 hours). The strong and bucky gluten in the bread flour is fighting you when you are trying to flatten the pizza into a thin disc, so something has to be done to render it less elastic, meaning weaker. Regarding imported flour, those famous Italian pizza making flours that you come across in specialist outlets here are surprisingly high in the actual protein count, but they are astonishingly stretchy (extensibility), and have so little elasticity that they are a dream to work with. That’s mother nature for you – European flour is big on extensibility, short on tough elasticity.

Yes, Panarians, the world of flour is diverse and exciting.

Please share:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Baker's Topics

About Paul Merry

BAKER’S TOPICS

  • 20 degree temperature threshold
  • A New Approach To Sourdough Wheat Leaven
  • Autolyse
  • Bagels and the water bath
  • Baker’s Tip: Coarser flours take more water
  • Baker’s Tip: Simple Plaiting
  • Baker’s Tip:. Quantities of different yeasts
  • Baking on a tile
  • Baking on a Tile
  • Chelsea Buns
  • Dough enrichment: adding fats and oils
  • Dough fermentation: The Fold
  • EASTER BAKING
  • Finishing a cob
  • Firing a cold oven
  • Flour too strong?
  • Green dough
  • How To Make The Devonshire Split
  • Kneading dough
  • Kugelhopf – popular in the Alsace
  • Large ovens: separate furnace or fire on the floor?
  • Making a cob (Part 1)
  • Making the Round Shape, Both Loose and Tight – Part 1
  • Making the Round Shape, Both Loose and Tight – Part 3
  • Malt, Maltose, Malt Products
  • Oxygen in dough
  • Plaiting
  • Plaiting – Part I
  • Poolish
  • Read Paul’s views on “craft”, as they appeared recently in two published articles
  • Rolling Olives & Oil Into Finished Dough
  • Saffron dough cake
  • Salt
  • Scalded flour
  • Shaping for a tin
  • Slashing the loaves
  • Stollen
  • Stoneground Flour
  • Sweet pastry
  • Table skills – Part I
  • Table skills – Part II
  • Temperature chart
  • The “ferment”
  • The baguette
  • The Chelsea Bun
  • The Country Housewife’s Outdoor Cloche Oven, 1897
  • Types Of Yeast
  • Understanding acidity & sourness
  • Use of the Sponge
  • Volume in a loaf
  • Water temperature and yeast
  • Wedding Rolls: How to Make Them
  • What’s special about wood-fired ovens?
  • Working with stoneground flour
PANARY - Teaching Breadmaking Since 1997
Teaching Breadmaking Since 1997
Every PANARY course is taught by Paul Merry, a master craftsman who favours a very practical approach to learning, regardless of any student’s prior experience..

Helpful Information

  • Cann Mills – Working Watermill
  • Which Course To Select?
  • Testimonials
  • Learn to bake
  • Gift vouchers
  • Accommodation

PANARY Mailing List

PANARY - Teaching Breadmaking Since 1997
For baking tips and special offers.
JOIN MAILING LIST

Contact PANARY

To contact Paul Merry, or speak with him, please ring +44 (0)1747 851102, email using ,  or visit our contact page.

Copyright © 2022 · PANARY

  • Terms of Service
  • Refund Policy
  • Privacy Policy
panary adj [L.panis bread + - ARY] Of or pertaining to bread; p. fermentation

Sorry, but BUY OUR BREAD is closed. Our next bake is on Thursday 14th July 2022. Please, pop-back anytime from Friday 8th place your next order. Thank you. Paul. Dismiss