Flour and Starches

Flour and Starches

Flour is the base of near to all our bakery products. We as bakers have defined even our own way of calculating and comparing our recipes based on flour: bakers percentage or bakers math. With these kind of calculations, a trained technologist can next to comparing formulations, review the proportions to:

•         Change or add new ingredients without changing the structure of the plain or base formulation.
•         Have a uniform measurement if sometimes certain ingredients might vary. Like with eggs if you use unpasteurised eggs in shell
•         A reference to scale up and down more easily.

The calculation method was introduced for the first time late 1950’s, but doesn’t tell us on the type of flour that is being used and where it’s suitable for. If the flour is too strong in relation with protein, you can adapt it to your needs, for instant when you are planning to make a cake, cookie or biscuit by diluting up to 20% with starch. In certain cases the type of starch can be important as well, but in general up to 10% it doesn’t make too much of a difference from a flour softening perspective. This implies that flour + starch will equal 100% in our baker's math. If we’re making cocoa based products we calculate the amount of cocoa powder as well to the 100%

In order to distinguish the different flours, should you have availability of them, then you are probably among the lucky few. Very likely you feel blessed when you have:

•         Soft flour
•         Strong (or bread) flour
•         All purpose flour

If you talk to your flour supplier, they will be able to educate you on the quality of your flour, otherwise we’ll be more than happy to learn you a few methods to assess the quality and potential of your flours.

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