Hi,

I live in Zürich and I'm trying to find some flour for baking croissants.

I am told that the best flour for this is the French T55 or German Type 550 . . . this is defined by the amount of ash residue left in the mix.

I couldn't find this in Coop and settled for Zopfmehl instead which is used to make brioche here.

Does anyone have any idea where I could find T55?

Thanks!

I have a kilo of French T55- if you are interested. And I'll be in France soon and can pick-up more if you like it (or even ready made croissants).

This is an old list I wrote a few years ago, I am using generally the normal weissmehl for almost all kinds of bakery and so far was happy with the results.



Another option for you would be to buy ready made butter puff pastry, and give it a few more turns ( tournieren) working in a little more butter in when doing so, but not too much! and then cut your triangles and form/roll the croissants. An easy way to cheat and taste like totally made from scratch



----------------------------------------------



Different types of flour according to their milling grade and other doughy stuff

The types of flour and accordingly their numbers are different, but because of that one doesn’t necessarily taste a difference in the final baked result :-)

The numbers say how much ‘husk’ of the grains remains in the flour, so the smaller the number the lighter and whiter the flour; the higher the number the more healthy parts remain in the flour.

By example flour of the type 405 contains 0, 045% of Minerals found in the husk.

For normal household use 4xx typed flours are commonly used,confectionery 5xx-7xx and for bread all the rest up to whole meal flour.

If you use for a cookie, for example, 4xx or 5xx type flour cannot be detected in the final result :-)

Wheat flour

Type 405
Has no specific flavour and can be used for cookies and other confectionery, pies, to thicken sauces etc.

Type 550
Stronger in taste and is usually used for yeast based bakery

Type 812
Fair flour used for bread baking

Type 1050
Strong flavoursome taste, high contains of protein and as a dark flour is best used for bread baking

Full grain Wheat flour

Has often no type number, as the full grain is ground in the mill and therefore contains all the vital ingredients and a lot of roughage



Do I have to sieve the flour?


Nowadays it is not necessary anymore to sieve the flour, this was done to omit lumps and other parts found in the flour in older days .
However, it is still recommendable to sieve the flour if you want to make a biscuit (b.e. angel food cake) because sieved flour can pass on some air to the dough (helps to make the cake really airy and fluffy)


Bread baking machine related q & a



Do I have to omit the bread from the machine immediately after baking?

Yes! When you leave the bread in the machine after is done, it starts to cool down and creates evaporation liquid, which will be soaked up by the loaf. This leads tot he fact that the bread has no crisp crust anymore and it is more difficult to omit from the baking form of the machine.


The bread has sunken in the baking form, what did I do wrong?
It is possible that u used too much liquid or too much yeast. Consider when you add other ingredients such as fruits, yoghurt, or cheese that you need to reduce the liquid added. Tinned fruit and veggies should be drained well and if necessary patted dry with some tissue paper.



The bread touches the lid of the bread-baking machine, is hat normal?
NO! You presumably used too much yeast or sugar. Too much sugar can lead the yeast to raise too much .You can also try to reduce the liquid (approx. minus 1 tbsp.) this will make the yeast raise less.


The last bread I made, didn’t rise properly and was like a brick, what went wrong?
It might be that the yeast used was too old. You might also have used too much salt; this prevents the yeast from rising properly. Consider as well the temperature for the liquid to be used according to manufacturers manual (too hot can destroy the yeast bacteria).


Could I double or half the amounts of ingredients in a recipe??
No! The machine is built for exactly the amount of dough given from the manufacturers manual. Too little dough and the kneading knife can loosen up and does not mix the dough properly; too much and the dough rises over the top of the baking form and can touch the heating element in the machine and causing smoke.

The majority of flour coming to either Coop or Migros goes through Swissmill (in Zürich). You can visit their website (in English), then follow the link to products. Here you will find enough information about most of the flours in Switzerland to answer your questions...

Further tip in their website - click on the picture (where it says Baking Flours), then follow the link to Weichweizen Hauptmehle. Here you will find the pallet price to purchase 100 kg. of flour, which tells you how much 1 kg. is costing a reseller, and hence the approximate margin...so 1 kg. of type 550 should cost a wholesaler 1.45 per kg.

Hope this helps...

Jack

Any recommendations for bread machines from the group? I've never owned one, but have considered it from time-to-time.

(sorry for being off-topic a bit)