Flour
Bread flour: what it is, how it differs from all-purpose, and how to choose it
Bread flour runs around 12.7% protein, all-purpose around 11.7%, and that single point is why the same recipe gives a tall, chewy loaf one week and a slack one the next. The American bag at least prints that number. Five countries sell the everyday bread flour under five labels, and three of those labels say nothing about strength at all.
At a glance
- Strength (W)
- 250 to 350
- Protein
- 11% to 14% *
- Water absorption
- not measured
- Stability
- not measured
- Ash
- null% to 0.8%
- Origin
- trigo mole de inverno e de primavera, moído em todo o mundo
- Grain
- trigo mole (Triticum aestivum), cerca de 95% do trigo produzido no mundo
Sources disagree. Legal minimums and the real product have drifted far apart: Brazil lets a flour with 7.5% protein be sold as tipo 1, Italy asks 11.0% of a tipo 0, and the market sells bread flour at 12% to 14%. Spain has the problem from the other end, since nobody ever legislated where fuerza begins and the sources put the line between W 250 and W 300. Buy by the number, never by the name.
What it is called in each country
| Country | Called |
|---|---|
| English | bread flour / strong flour (proteína 12% a 14%) |
| Português | farinha de trigo tipo 1 com proteína acima de 11 g/100 g na tabela nutricional |
| Italiano | farina tipo 0 (cinzas máx. 0,65%, proteína mín. 11%) ou tipo 1 forte |
| Français | farine T65 (cinzas 0,62% a 0,75%), a farinha de pain de campagne |
| Español | harina de fuerza (W acima de 250, sem definição legal do limiar) |
What it is for
This is the flour for the bread you eat during the week: sandwich loaves, country rounds, baguettes, ciabatta, focaccia, bagels and pizza on a one or two day ferment. Its range is W 250 to 350, enough gluten to hold gas through a long rise and still stretch instead of fighting back.
It also drinks more water, which is the part nobody credits. On the American Society of Baking scale anything above 58% absorption is a strong flour and above 63% is very strong, and that extra water is where an open, moist crumb comes from.
If the dough goes into the fridge overnight, this is the flour still standing in the morning.
When not to use it
Cakes, muffins, cookies, pancakes and pie crust. All the protein that helps a loaf works against a tender crumb: you get chew where you wanted crumble, and a batter that toughens if you mix a few seconds too long. Those want all-purpose, or a pastry flour.
At the other end, leave it alone for very rich, very long doughs. Past twelve hours with a lot of butter and sugar the job belongs to a gran fuerza flour above W 350. This one is the workhorse, not the specialist.
How to use it
In the United States the front of the bag is marketing and the nutrition panel is the spec. Divide grams of protein by the serving weight and multiply by 100: 4 g in a 30 g serving is 13.3%, inside the 12% to 14% band. All-purpose lands a point lower, near 11.7%.
In Britain the same flour is strong white flour, and the panel reads per 100 g, so the protein figure is already the percentage. Plain flour is the British all-purpose. In Canada, milled from hard red spring wheat, even the all-purpose sits closer to bread flour than its American namesake.
If a recipe asks for bread flour and you have all-purpose, take about four points of water out, roughly 20 g on 500 g, and skip the long cold retard. Going the other way, put the water back: a bread flour on all-purpose hydration bakes tight and dry.
The story
The English speaking world never built a grading table for flour. American wheat has been traded by class and by protein for over a century, hard spring wheat for bread, soft winter for cake, and the retail shelf inherited that vocabulary. Britain skipped numbers altogether: strong and plain describe what the flour does in your hands.
Continental Europe measured ash instead. Burn a sample and what stays behind is mineral matter, concentrated in the bran, so ash tells you how much of the grain survived the mill. Italy's DPR 187/2001 caps tipo 00 at 0.55% ash, tipo 0 at 0.65% and tipo 1 at 0.80%, with minimum protein of 9.0%, 11.0% and 12.0%. The French scale is pure ash, T45 below 0.50% up to T150 above 1.40%, T65 at 0.62% to 0.75%. Brazil's IN MAPA 8/2005 caps tipo 1 at 0.80% ash and asks only 7.5% protein.
One twist before you trust a European label: the décret 63-720 of 1963 was repealed on 1 July 2016, by décret 2016-884. It gets reported as the death of the T scale, and it is not: the T table never lived in that décret, it lives in the arrêté du 13 juillet 1963, a separate instrument nobody has shown to be repealed, and a Label Rouge specification approved by the arrêté du 9 août 2022 still calls those types légaux. The ash method is standardised (AFNOR NF V03-720, ISO 2171), but none of it describes strength. Only W and the protein on an American panel do.
Frequently asked
- What is the difference between bread flour and all-purpose flour?
- Protein. Bread flour is around 12.7%, all-purpose around 11.7%, and bread flour sells from 12% to 14%. It takes more water than all-purpose, holds a long rise and bakes taller and chewier. All-purpose gives a softer, shorter loaf.
- Can I make bread with all-purpose flour?
- Yes, and millions of good loaves are. Pull the hydration back about four points and keep the fermentation shorter. What you should not do is a 24 hour cold retard: below roughly W 250 the gluten gives out and you find soup in the morning.
- Is strong white flour the same as bread flour?
- Yes. Strong white flour is the British name for the same product, and Canadian mills tend to say bakers flour. Strong promises gluten, not a finer grind.
- What is the European equivalent of bread flour?
- Italian tipo 0, French T65, Brazilian tipo 1 above 11 g of protein per 100 g, Spanish harina de fuerza above W 250. Careful with the first three: those are ash grades, not strength, and two T65 flours can behave nothing alike.