I've been using a Patent flour for my breads with results I really like but my local supplier is going to stop carrying Patent flour so I'm thinking of switching it up to All Trumps flour. But I'm curious to see what everyone is using to bake their breads. Sound Off!!
All Trumps is a high-gluten flour and it may turn out to be very different from your patent flour in its behavior. Depending on what you bake you may be better off with bread flour or all-purpose/H&R flour.
I do mostly artisan type breads so something with a higher gluten should work well for me. I know I'm gonna have to make some adjustments to my hydration but should work out fine. I'm curious to see what everyone is using cause I want to start experimenting with different mixes of flours and seeing what results from that.
I also bake mostly artisan-type sourdough breads, in two and three loaf batches, up to 6-10 loaves per month. I try to stick with flours around the 11% protein range, and will go with something lower before I will go higher. I use one or more of the below for nearly all of my bread baking. For the Whole Grain Wheat breads I bake, I mill my own flour from hard white winter whole kernel wheat I (most recently bought) from Pleasant Hill Grain.
King Arthur (Red Bag) All Purpose Flour (11.7% Protein)
Central Milling Organic Bakers Craft Flour (11.4% Protein)
Central Milling Organic Bakers Craft Plus (Malted) Flour (11.4% Protein)
Giusto's Artisan Unbleached Malted Bread Flour (11.5% Protein)
In addition to one or two from the above that I have on hand at all times, as well as the un-milled whole wheat, I keep a bag of King Arthur (Blue Bag) Bread flour (12.7%) for special uses like the occasional batch of bagels, and for Hamelman's 5-Grain bread that I bake as a 9-grain variant. To hold up the soaker of seeds and grains I use the higher protein bread flour.
I would suggest you buy a (Blue) bag of the King Arthur flour and try it. I suggest this particular flour because many retail outlets have it in 5# and/or 10# bags, so it is not too much to use up if you don't like it, but still enough for several bakes so you have some time to get used to it. I find it too strong for most breads. To my taste they come out a bit gummy, and a lot rubbery, due to the higher protein/stronger gluten, but that's just me. You may get better results (in my terms) or you might like it.
If you really want to go to stronger flour you might like Grain Craft (formerly Pendleton Milling) MorBread Flour (11.7-12.4% Protein). I used to get this at Cash and Carry in 25# bags, for just $18.00! It performed well, and it was a bargain compared to some of the flours I listed above. I finally concluded that I don't bake enough to worry about a few cents per loaf of cost difference, and started baking with the variety of higher cost high quality flours listed above.
Whatever you choose to do, best of luck to you, and enjoy the testing.
OldWoodenSpoon
Central Milling supplies Safeway and Whole Foods with Beehive as the store branded organic AP flour (in the US). I'm going to stick with that for cost reasons.
Other than that, I have a Mockmill 100 to mill fresh wheat berries for the non-white portion of my bread (anywhere from 20-50% currently).