Advice please on which flour to 'dress' the bread with ......

Toast

I have previously used wholemeal rye to coat my loaves prior to baking or in the banneton to prevent sticking.  Recently I have used rice flour too.  However these tend to discolour (especially the rice flour) when baking.  

I do love the contrast of nice white flour patterning from the banneton or against the slash and plenty of the bread on TFL looks just wonderful.

I tend to flour, slash, spray then bake either in a Dutch Oven or on a tile and cover with an upside down pyrex bowl (230c)

Am I doing anything in particular that discolours the flour?  Should I use another flour?

Any advice would be most welcome, thank you :)

 

Possibly unrelated, but I decided a while back to buy a gluten-free baking power as I sometimes make GF cakes, etc. so thought I'd just stock the one type... However recently when using it to bake scones I found that they were coming out speckled on-top! The was the rice flour used in the baking powder causing the speckles - not normally visible in cakes, but they were showing up in my scones...

As for banetons - I use plain white bread flour. If it discolours (darkens), then it's been "boldly baked", or "well fired", or on its way to toasthood :-)

-Gordon

What a beautiful loaf! And a nice plate ;-), too!

to distract from the misshapen loaf .......... if you look again you will see that it is a bit weird towards the back.  I started out with a half cut then went mad with the cuts at the front!  (I never learn!)