Get to know your flour

Even though the Welbilt bread machine can make the process of making great bread simpler, you still need to use quality ingredients.  Last post we talked about how to use yeast.  This time it's all about flour.

Flour is an organic food product that contains many of the natural properties found in wheat.  Gluten, a natural protein found in wheat, is what makes bread dough elastic when efficiently kneaded.  The higher gluten content of bread flour, which is available in most local supermarkets, is what produces high volume loaves of bread.  With the Welbilt bread machine, your family and friends will be astounished at how much better homemade bread than store bought.

As an organic food product, the gluten or protein level of flour can vary from harvest to harvest.  In order to stabilize the protein levels of the flour, the mills add dough conditioners such as potassium bromate or ascorbic acid (a form of vitamin C).

In Welbilt baking tests, using flour milled from the 1992 harvest, they consistenly found that the flours contain
ascorbic acid provide the best results.  You can determine whether or not the flour you are using contains ascorbic acid as a dough conditioner by reading the ingredient list on the flour bag.  Just know that the Welbilt bread machine will make it great, if you use great ingredients.  If you are unable to purchase flour with ascorbic acid, you can try adding 1 teaspoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice to the ingredients in the Welbilt bread machine prior to pressing START.  In fact, you may want to consider adding 1 yeaspoon of lemon juice to all of your bread recipes to assure consistent baking results every time.