brooklyn1 wrote:
>
> "TammyM" wrote:
> >
> >> What is the functional difference between high gluten flour and bread
> >> flour? Are they interchangeable?
>
> Bread flour is high gluten flour. Now it depends on how high is high
> and of what function. Which flour to use is determined by what you
> desire to bake. For most everything folks bake at home ordinary AP
> flour works fine and so do the various brands. Flour is not an exact
> product (they're actually blends to obtain a particular gluten value),

It's a little bit more complicated than that. A large flour
mill will also have a test kitchen where they actually bake
loaves of bread to evaluate rising qualities and crumb.
Flour has perhaps the most complex production process of
any commodity. The flow sheet for a large flour mill is
comparable in complexity to a petroleum refinery. Many
intermediate products are obtained and blended to make
the various grades of flour.

> every wheat harvest is different... it's very easy to convince oneself
> psychologically that one brand of flour is better than another... it
> never ceases to amaze me how people can be made to believe that a
> basic staple foodstuff is better because it costs more, is in a
> fancier package, it's more difficult to locate... this is all called
> "marketing".

It's also expertise developed over many years. I can
believe that some brands may be better formulated than
others. They may also use different equipment, and
a different number of rollers in the breakdown of the
wheat berry. Flour is made by passing the wheat between
grinding rollers that have progressively finer teeth.
The final rollers are called scratch rollers because
the grooves between the teeth are more like scratches
in the surface of the roller.