August 3, 2018 - 10:59pm
Anyone use Bulk Barn bread flour for sourdough in Canada?
I live in Victoria and the only bread flour I can find is Robin hood and flour from Bulk Barn. On their website it said the bread flour is unbleached but in the store it just said bread flour. This is my first time using Bulk Barn's bread flour but during the mixing stage, I have a weird feeling of the hand feel. It didnt give me the strong gluten hand feel like the AP white flour. Instead, its kinda like whole wheat flour. Can anyone tell me am I getting the right flour? Does it look normal like the bread flour you got from bulk barn? Thanks.
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Did you happen to notice if there was one of those pull-off ingredient papers on the bin? I’ve bought some from bulk barn years ago but back then I was using a bread maker so I didn’t have as much hands on experience with the dough... Here in Ottawa I’ve found Loblaws (probably Superstore in Vic) to have a decent selection of flour. If you have a Costco membership you can get a couple really nice flours, looks for the brand “Boreal”, it’s organic and fairly cheap!
Bulk Barn’s bread flour and it didn’t quite look like yours. You look like you got Wholewheat rather than bread flour. I can see bran particles in your picture and the bread flour at Bulk Barn is creamy looking but without particles. Is it possible they mixed up the labels?
I have started to simply add vital wheat gluten to turn my Rogers No Additives Unbleached Flour into bread flour. Here is a calculator to help with that.
http://flourmath.bradfordrobertson.com/
I aim for 14% protein/gluten when I want bread flour.
Otherwise, do you have a Safeway? I can get Rogers Bread flour but it isn’t Unbleached.
Hi Danni3ll3, I was wondering did they make a mistake but their bread flour and whole wheat bread flour are side by side, and the bread flour is almost cost a double compare to the whole wheat flour. I would like to ask the staffs but there was a few very young staffs there that days and I guess they wouldn't know. haha.
shall we say, “disinterested” at times. I went in looking for evaporated cane sugar and I found all kinds of things in there that shouldn’t have been. They blamed some of the bits on the packaging (paper and wool) and shrugged their shoulders at the black specks. So I am going to the local bulk store instead.
Also, the price of flour in there is quite steep for the amount I use. So I use the Rogers. I wish I could get my hands on the Silver Star but no such luck here.
Victoria? You should be able to get decent flour there. Not too far from I.
Of course being on the isle your selection might be a little limited. But it's still Canada.
In interior BC I can get 20 kg bags of Rogers Silver Star, an excellent flour for bread, at Costco for like 12 bucks. Pretty sure it is unbleached. It's milled right in BC in Armstrong and if you look at the package you can see that it's quite freshly milled, usually been on the shelf only a month or two. Might be worth looking at.
Otherwise, perhaps a trip to the mainland to load up on flour would be a good idea.
Normal Canadian flour is basically everyone else's bread flour, by the way, if you look at the protein content. It doesn't need to be labeled "bread flour" to be good bread flour.
Hi Love, I saw the Silver star in costco too, but I'm not sure is it a bread flour or all purpose. I'm trying a recipe called for strong bread flour that's why I am trying to find. Do you think silver star have high gluten?
So this is the bag of silver star from costco here, is it bread flour?
content? Divide the protein by the grams and it will give you and approximate gluten number.
The Rogers website says this:
Silver Star is a specific bread flour for hearth breads. Good stuff; I've been baking with it for years now.
https://www.rogersfoods.com/white-flours/
Hey, first time I've seen someone else from Victoria on here! I buy lots of different flours at Bulk Barn, but also buy my bread flour at Costco here (Rogers Silver Star; less than $13 for a 20 kg bag).
What you seem to have there is either a bread mix or whole wheat bread flour. The unbleached bread flour at Bulk Barn looks like this> http://www.bulkbarn.ca/en/Products/All/Hard-Unbleached-Bread-Flour-331. It may very well be a Rogers flour here on the West Coast. It is enriched and has additives, but no bran or germ. The one you have bought definitely has those!
I'd be happy to go flour shopping with you, or get together to talk about bread sometime! I have a tiny little community bakery in the Gorge Admirals area (you can Google me - The Lazy Loafer). :)
Wendy
Hi Wendy, sounds amazing! I will definitely check out your bakery! Great to see someone here from Victoria!
So this is the loaf I baked from the "Bread Flour" from bulk barn, it definitely taste like a whole grain bread. It got the oven spring but the crumb is stiff and dense.
That's one beautiful loaf of bread. I wouldn't call that dense or heavy looking at all, for a whole grain bread (as it apparently is). :)