"Charles Perry" > wrote in message
k.net...
....
> Flour snobbery? You can do a lot worse than Gold Medal flour. You can ,
> and I have,
> made perfecly acceptable bread with GM flour.
Thanks for chiming in, Charles. I was gonna say that very same thing, but I
know how some of the "hard-core" in this group can get when their favorite
ox gets gored...(:-o)! So I try to stay out of those kinds of
kerfluffles...

> OK, it is not my first choice for sourdough bread, but it is not deserving
> of the scorn being heaped upon it here. I use a lot of it for other
> things and I find it to be as consistant within its class as King Arthur
> is in its group.
About the same as my experience. Like many coming and reading here, as a
newbie I too was inundated with all of the advice and guidance that can be
found here. Although largely excellent, too often it is laden with
pointless minutia and rife with self-proclaimed opinion. And, as I so often
heard recommended, I too ran the gamut of at least trying most of the flours
mentioned here and/or by others. And I've yet to find a substantive
difference between them.

I used to zealously hunt down and bake only with "Bread-Flour", ground and
mixed to very exacting high-protein standards. At home, that's easy. Cuz I
know all of the stores, who carries what, and where to go. But, we spend a
good deal of our time on the road, so that kind of knowledge is pretty well
worthless on the rest of the planet. Then, on some website I was browsing
(SDI, perhaps?) I learned that they don't even recommend 'special' "bread
flour". Ordinary AP seems to perform just fine, they said. So I tried that
tact. Now I bake with whatever OTS brand of unbleached AP the store I'm in
carries. And I've not yet had a loaf that's failed to perform properly...

Might that some wheat grain that was hand selected and imported by a
registered courier, carefully planted in organically maintained loam,
watered and hand tended stalk-by-stalk, with each grain carefully culled and
packed in a shock-proof temperture controlled container before being shipped
to mills that use only the finest, diamond-studded stones be better?
Probably. But it just doesn't seem to be worth it to this
minimalist...(:-o)!

In fact, I just pulled a nice little Jewish Rye loaf out of the oven, made
( http://www.innerlodge.com/Recipes/Br...h/RyeBread.htm )
primarily with OTS, Albertson's unbleached AP (and a cup from a small bag of
Bob's Red-Mill dark-rye). Haven't gnawed on it just yet. Gonna wait till
it cools. But I made it to become the underpinnings of a great turkey
sandwich later tonight...(:-o)!

> If you are baking bad bread and using GM flour, you have more to worry
> about than the flour.
Spot on!

> Good luck finding a flour you like. We are lucky here in that you can
> grind Montanna Wheat (red or white) right at the grocery store and also
> get great Dakota Maid bread flour fresh fom the mill sometimes within days
> of being packaged.
Now *that* I've not yet had a chance to try. Might be fun... I think after
the spring, springs, I may wander out that way to give that a shot...


L8r all,
Dusty
--
>
> Charles
>