Glance at flours

Let me begin by emphasizing that I do love baguettes, those crispy and tasty fresh rolls coming from my favourite bakery... Yummm! For sure I'll make a post later with my favorites in the bakery.

But this time I have to skip the making of breads and baguettes, as there is pretty much stuff about flours as well, and I really dislike long posts...

So, about flours. As we all know, a lot of different kinds of flours exist all over the world. In Europe for example, there are more types of flours as grains. Just from corn we may find 2-5 different types, depending on the market and the country, of course. Not to mention the endless varieties of wheat, buckwheat, rye and other flours...
Wheat flour, as the most common of all, can be found everywhere, from the smallest shops to the biggest supermarkets. The well-known classification of them is based on the "richness", in other words, the bran- and germ content of the flour. Also, we can divide wheat flours into bread flours (that is, high gluten content, making a hard flour) and soft- or cake flours (that is, low in gluten and makes a soft texture).

The richer the better - usually. Two very important aspects that we should never forget about whole wheat flours are the origin and age. First, if the flour is coming from a farm where fertilizers are used habitually, we shouldn't replace white flours with whole grain ones. As chemicals are stored in the kernel (bran) of the wheat, whole wheat flour may actually contain too much of them, so in this case mixing it with white flour could be a good idea. Also, the age counts, as more time passes by after milling the grains, the higher the risk that the flour would contain fungus. Fungus generate toxins, which are harmful...

Let's just not get too far. The healthiest choice is fresh milled, organic whole wheat flour. In the case of cakes and pastries, we may use white or semi-whole flour (I often use the latter one for cakes only).

So what to buy, and where to buy, if you are living in France? Most bakeries ("boulangerie") sell different kinds, but you shouldn't buy if you're not sure whether the flour's fresh or not. Personally I prefer buying in stores where there are a lot of customers so I can be sure the products are fresh. Also, there are some towns where you can buy directly from the mill. An example on that is the "Mills of Versailles".

Don't forget that the French have a different numbering for the types of flour than other nations. Wholemeal flour has the number of 150, while 45 and 55 are supposed to be white flours (personally I've never tried type 45, as it contains almost no vitamins at all). However, the most common types are 55, 80 and 110, which you can find all over the country.
No need to mention that flour type 150 is quite hard to find; it is not surprising, as France is - in some ways - the country of refined goods.