Flour for cookies

I saw on a baking web site where it was stated that bakeries don't use all-purpose flour. For cookies, bread flour is used. Is this true? I would think the cookies would be tough or chewy but then I read somewhere where the fat content in the cookie recipe balances this out. Can anyone set me straight?

Reply to
Ceil Wallace
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I am generally leery of generalizations. "White boys can't jump," etc. I suspect it depends on the bakery and the recipe.

Many artisan bakeries don't use bread flour except for specialty breads, such as bagels. They prefer a lower gluten flour, such as all-purpose, for most work. It gives better flavor and handles better, though it may not rise quite as far.

When we were doing cookies in my bakery, we used a mix of bread flour and cake flour to approximate all-purpose flour. We used bread flour because we're in the sticks and couldn't get the flours we really wanted, but we could get a good bread flour. Sometimes, you use what you can get.

Mike

Reply to
Mike Avery

Not all bakeries follow such thinking..specially in North America and .it depends what part of the world is the bakery located. In other countries where wheat quality is not good or wheat is imported its expensive . Therefore they have to use only one kind of flour for all baking application. The resulting protein level ranges from 10-12% which is approximately the protein content of all purpose flour.

.> Is this true? I

Formulations for specific bakery products vary from country to country. In some places they use bread flour for cookies and bread but it the quality is not good. The bread may be okay but the cookies shrank a lot after baking, its chewy eating and tend to peak and crack during baking. To minimize that they add more fat in the recipe But still from western standards the cookie quality is not what we call good; it does not spread much during baking which is one critical parameter in cookie baking.. Industrial biscuit manufacturers in such flour quality limited countries the add sodium metabisulfite in the cookie formulation to weaken the gluten, and they can still obtain an acceptable cookie by western standards.

I happen to have experienced doing practical baking in such country where there is only one flour available. It is challenging to be a baker in such places. If I make bread I used the flour straight and sometimes with admixture of wheat gluten to get the desired flour strength for a certain bread. If I make cakes such as the pound cake/ butter cake I use blend of5-

10% wheat starch/9095 % flour; If I make sponges, I blend 15-20% wheat starch with 80-85% flour. If I do cookies I used blend of 8-20% of wheat starch and the remainder is wheat flour.. If wheat starch is not available I use corn or tapioca starch to simulate the wheat starch.

If I make bagels and other hearth breads including thin crust pizza bases , I blend 5% vital wheat gluten and 95% flour etc. Indeed North Americans are lucky as we are spoiled with regards to flour variety and quality. We can even dictate the flour mill to specifically mill flour to ones specifications. Never can you do that abroad. Roy

Reply to
Roy

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