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I'm back with another question. I have been baking zucchini bread for a long time. I always used bleached flour. Now that I am trying my hand in yeast breads I use unbleached flour. Can I use unbleached flour in my zucchini bread? I bake at least 100 to 130 loafs of zucchini bread every summer and some in the winter (I freeze some zucchini for the winter) I make basic kind chocolate, lemon, applesauce and carrot it keeps me bizzzzzy My friends and family love them. I hope I can use unbleached I don't have a lot of space for all kinds of flours

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  • Hello New Baker, and welcome. Your question is interesting, only your title was a bit too broad, so people wouldn't know what kinds of flour and what kinds of bread you mean without clicking through to the full text. I fixed that for you. – rumtscho♦ Feb 4 '17 at 9:51
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EDIT

Cook's Illustrated (America's Test Kitchen) tested bleached versus unbleached flour in baking and in savory sauces.

They found that unbleached flour works pretty much identically to bleached flour in sauces, but they caution that some testers could taste off notes in some baked applications using bleached flour. The difference is more pronounced in applications where the ratio of flour to other ingredients is high.

In baking tests, bleached flour was criticized for tasting flat or having “off” flavors (texturally, the flours behaved the same). These characteristics, however, were much harder to detect in recipes with a high proportion of ingredients other than flour, such as cornbread or oatmeal cookies.

According to ATK, unbleached flour is preferable to bleached. You may find that you actually like your bread better using unbleached flour.

Interestingly, the link in @dougal 2.0.0's answer directly contradicts ATK. Kitchn prefers bleached flour for quickbreads, claiming that bleached flour is softer.

So, knowledgeable cooks disagree. I will say that I frequently make quick breads including zucchini. I always use unbleached flour, and I've never seen any reason to buy bleached.

Original Answer

To the absolute best of my knowledge, I don't think there is a difference between unbleached and bleached flours in a particular application other than what quickly becomes obvious.

So, if you have used both flours in your bread, I see no reason other than preference or economy to use one or the other.

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  • I thought bleached flour was a little softer? I haven't ever tried to compare myself, though. – Cascabel♦ Feb 4 '17 at 0:41
  • Interesting that they found the texture the same! There's all kinds of stuff claiming bleached is softer, more suited to things where you'd want cake flour, and so on; maybe it's just folk wisdom. – Cascabel♦ Feb 4 '17 at 19:44
  • I'm about to edit in another source, the one from @Dougal 2.0.0's answer. The Kitchn says that unbleached flour is softer and preferred for quickbreads. – Jolenealaska♦ Feb 4 '17 at 19:46
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    I haven't bought bleached flour in over a decade... not sure why I'd start now :P I agree. There's really no need to use bleached flour for this. – Catija♦ Feb 4 '17 at 22:09
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    The unbleached flour worked very well in my zucchini bread. Thank you to all for the advice – New Baker Feb 6 '17 at 4:45
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It only a difference in colors , yes be the answer just add butter to keep bread from being too tough or hard/ dry.

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