How Different Flours Affects Your Results
One of the most impressive things about baking sourdough bread is how little you actually need – just water, flour, salt. With those 3 simple ingredients, you can bake a beautifully fluffy sourdough bread with a crispy, crackly crust and a soft and tender, flavorful interior.
Let’s go over those ingredients now…
Flour
Flour is the largest part of the recipe, so its the most important one. Choosing the right type is crucial for great results.
These days, we’re lucky to have access to many local mills and easy online options for ordering flour, which opens up a world of possibilities for home bakers. You can experiment with various flour types, each with its own unique flavor and baking qualities.
You may have a specific type of sourdough bread you want to make. Let’s talk about the flours most commonly used in sourdough baking and how they affect your final results:
Can’t Beat Wheat
Wheat is the gold standard for making bread because of it can stretch and expand without tearing (elasticity) while also being shapeable and formable (extensibility). This quality is crucial for creating a dough that can rise and hold its shape during baking.
Wheat is able to do this because it has gluten, a key protein found in wheat. Gluten mainly consists of two types of proteins: gliadin and glutenin.
Gliadin helps the dough expand, while glutenin provides strength and shape.
Together, they create a dough that can trap carbon dioxide gas produced during fermentation, allowing the bread to rise beautifully while maintaining its desired shape.
These two qualities are essential for trapping carbon dioxide gas produced during fermentation. Which is what helps the bread rise and achieve a good texture.
This makes wheat an ideal choice for bread making, leading to its prominence in kitchens worldwide.
White Bread Flour
White bread flour is often considered the gold standard for baking sourdough bread. It produces a beautiful loaf with excellent ovenspring, a great ear (the crust that pops up), and a nice belly (the shape of the bread). This flour has a high protein and gluten content, which is crucial for creating strong dough that can trap gas during fermentation, leading to a good rise.
Here are some fast facts:
Whole Wheat Flour
“Whole wheat flour” is unsifted, retaining the bran layer of the wheat grain. This adds nutrients and fiber, making it healthier than white flour. It’s essentially the complete form of any wheat flour. Whole wheat flour absorbs A LOT of water so all whole wheat recipes will be high hydration.
Here are some fast facts:
Attention: To check what type of whole wheat flour you have, see the ingredients list.
All Purpose Flour
All-purpose flour is a low gluten flour, which means it contains less protein compared to bread flour. This lower gluten content requires less water when making dough. It is designed for baking items like cookies, cakes, pies, and muffins—basically anything that doesn’t need a chewy texture.
You can still use all-purpose flour to make bread, but the result will be more cake-like, leading to a softer, less chewy loaf. This makes it a great option for those who prefer a lighter texture in their baked goods. However, if you’re aiming for traditional bread with a chewy crust and structure, you might want to consider using a higher gluten flour instead
High Protein Flour
Often labeled as bread flour, this type is great for providing structure to doughs that need extra strength. Just be cautious not to use too much, as it can make your bread chewy.You can still use all-purpose flour to make bread, but the result will be more cake-like, leading to a softer, less chewy loaf. This makes it a great option for those who prefer a lighter texture in their baked goods. However, if you’re aiming for traditional bread with a chewy crust and structure, you might want to consider using a higher gluten flour instead
Ancient Grains
Ancient grain flours like Einkorn, Spelt, Rye, and Kamut are known for being nutritious and flavorful. However, they have low gluten content and high fiber, which means they won’t behave the same way as white bread flour.
When using these flours in sourdough baking, expect a denser loaf that may not rise as well, resulting in less ovenspring. To improve the texture and rise, you can mix these flours with all-purpose or bread flour, or add sweeteners to enhance flavor and speed up fermentation.
While ancient grain sourdough can be very tasty, be aware that the final bread will be much denser than traditional white bread, giving it a unique character. Adjusting your techniques and recipes can help you successfully incorporate these ancient grains into your baking.
Light vs. Dark
Flour comes from grain that is ground. Then it is either sifted or not sifted. Flours that are sifted are called light or white. Flours that are not sifted are called dark or whole. Let’s break down the differences between them in simple terms.
White/Light Flour
This type of flour is commercially sifted, which means most of the bran is removed. Because it has less bran, it contains less protein than whole flour. The reduced bran content requires less water to hydrate and allows for better ovenspring, resulting in lighter, fluffier bread. This is why white flour is often used for making classic white bread.
Whole/Dark Flour
In contrast, whole flour is sifted but retains more of the bran, giving it a grittier texture. It has a higher protein and fiber content compared to white flour. Whole flour absorbs A LOT of water. This means whole wheat recipes will always need more water than white flour recipes. Which in turn, results in less ovenspring.
As a result, whole flour produces denser bread with a heartier texture, often leading to a red-brown bread color.
In other words, white flour leads to light, airy bread, while whole flour creates denser, more nutritious loaves. Both types have their unique qualities, and choosing between them depends on the type of bread you want to bake!
What do I use?
I usually lean towards organic flours for health reasons.
I am lucky enough to live close to a local miller, so my bread flour comes from local wheat grown not too far from me and is milled not too long ago (ie. not sitting in shelves for months).
If I don’t buy my flour from my local miller, I buy their wheat berries and stone grind my own flour for immediate use.
In my opinion, this is best practice –to mill your own flour or to buy local. This way you know it’s fresh and minimally processed.
If you have a local mill near you, you can also talk to the farmer about their wheat. Sometimes knowing the farmer who grows the wheat (and knowing their organic practices) is more trustworthy than any label on a bag.
If you don’t have this option, some great brands available in most grocery stores and health food stores are King Arthur Baking Company, Bob’s Red Mill, and Arrowhead Mills.
Finding your favorite flour will likely take a bit of trial and error, and that’s perfectly okay! I suggest ordering a few 5-pound bags from different places to see which one you like best.
Water
Let’s not overthink this. Tap water, filtered water, bottled water –if you can safely drink it, it works just fine.
That being said, not all safe drinking water is the same and some are better to use than others.
Let’s go over the different kinds of water now…
Chlorine
Tap water is usually just fine for making dough, but if there’s too much chlorine it can mess things up a bit. To fix that, just let the water evaporate for a few hours before using it, and that should take care of the chlorine issue.
Bottled Water
Yes, you can use bottled water for sourdough bread baking!
If your tap water is chlorinated or has a strong mineral content, bottled spring water can be a good alternative. It’s safe to drink, and it typically doesn’t contain the additives that can affect fermentation.
What water do I use?
I have well water and a whole-house filtration system. The whole-house water is softened and filtered. Drinking water (a separate spout next to my kitchen faucet) is then extra filtered through carbon filters and reverse osmosis, so it’s extra purified. I drink this water and this is what I use for my cooking and baking.
On top of that, a few years ago we bought a Berkey Water Filter in case of power outages. We take the reverse osmosis water and filter it again in my Berkey. I am not entirely sure how it all works, but water was one of those things I went down the rabbit hole researching and now we are filtered 10x over.
When I want to use warm water when mixing dough or feeding my starter, I simply fill up a mug with ¼ boiling hot water and ¾ cold water. I check the water temp with a meat thermometer and make sure it isn’t over 100F before I use it.
Salt
Salt plays a small but mighty role in bread making, usually added at about 1.8% to 2% of the total flour weight.
This tiny amount can greatly enhance flavor, control fermentation, tighten the dough, and help preserve color and flavor by reducing oxidation. It also helps manage gas production, which is crucial for maintaining a good dough structure.
I prefer using fine-grained sea salt, though kosher salt is also acceptable if measured carefully. Be cautious with table salt that contains iodine, as it can affect the dough.
Optional Ingredients
You only need 3 ingredients to make sourdough bread –flour, water and salt. But that doesn’t mean we can’t add more! Here are other ingredients found in popular sourdough recipes…
Sugar
Sugar enhances the flavor of bread and creates a delightful caramelized crust. Its ability to attract moisture is vital for providing yeast with the necessary environment to thrive. Too much sugar, however, can hinder the fermentation process.
Fats
Yes, you can use bottled water for sourdough bread baking!
If your tap water is chlorinated or has a strong mineral content, bottled spring water can be a good alternative. It’s safe to drink, and it typically doesn’t contain the additives that can affect fermentation.
Malt
Malt is an important ingredient in sourdough baking, and understanding the difference between diastatic and nondiastatic malt can really enhance your bread.
Diastatic Malt
This type of malt is made by sprouting grains like wheat or barley and then heating them at a lower temperature. The gentle heating preserves the enzymes, especially amylase, which help convert starches in the flour to sugars (maltose). This process boosts fermentation by providing more sugar for the yeast to feed on, leading to better rise and flavor in your bread. The extra sugar also promotes caramelization, which adds color and flavor to the crust.
You typically won’t need to add diastatic malt to most white flours, as they often already contain it. However, if you are working with a recipe that has a large percentage of white flour that lacks malt or if you notice sluggish fermentation, adding diastatic malt can be beneficial. It’s also helpful if the crust color is not as rich as desired.
When using diastatic malt, start with a small amount—around 0.25% to 1% of the total flour weight—for example, a recipe that calls for 500g of flour will only need 10g or less of diastatic malt powder, if at all. Mix with the flour before beginning your dough.
Nondiastatic Malt
Unlike diastatic malt, nondiastatic malt is heated at higher temperatures, which deactivates the enzymes. But it does add sugars to the dough for flavor and improve the crust color. A common form of nondiastatic malt is barley malt syrup, which is often used in recipes like sourdough bagels to achieve a specific flavor and color.