I decided that after six months of breadbaking, I'm ready to check flours. Up until now, I just bought the bread flour in the local shop (ok, the local shop is out of breadflour and yeast, because of covid, so the sourdough is a real saver now:)). Google tells me the most important difference between flour is the protein content. High protein for bread, low protein for cakes and in-between of all-purpose. Now this is a bit strange for me already, since I guess there are three important proteins that are in the flour: gliadin, glutenin and amylase, so this seems a bit generic, but the sources seem to imply that protein content is equivalent to how much gluten will form.
So I checked the labels of the local brand I use and was very surprised that the all-purpose flour (9.8 g) had in fact higher protein content than the bread flour (8.6 g). This would mean that the all-purpose would make a stronger dough (testing in progress). This might be a local phenomenon (Hungary), but it is more likely I'm not understanding something.
Some of the texts mention how fine the milling is, but I couldn't find any definitive answer to how the fineness of the milling would alter the properties of the dough. I also think the ash content of the bread flour is higher, but it is not exactly clear to me from the labels.
A translation of the table on the labels:
- energy
- fat
- of which saturated fat
- carbohydrates
- of which sugar
- dietary fibers
- protein
- salt
Could somebody clear this up for me? How can the bread flour protein content be higher than the all-purpose? Is milling fineness important (I'm not sure I could tell the difference between the too, so it can't be extreme)?