Pastry Flour Country Sourdough


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baking

bread
Sourdough with 8% protein pastry flour

As challenge/experiment I wanted to try to make a decent country sourdough out of 100% white pastry flour, specifically Bob’s Red Mill Fine Pastry Flour, intended for pastries and cakes with a protein content of 8-9%. Also wanted to do this to dispel the myth I’ve seen a few times that you need the highest protein flour possible to make good bread. It is definitely possible to decent bread using weaker and all sorts of flour.

Process

  1. Mixed preferment and left overnight until mature, ~2-3x volume

  2. In the morning I mixed the flour, preferment, and the water (reserved 5%). Left to autolyse for 20 minutes.

  3. Added salt and a little more water I did not measure, mixed in bowl for a bit and kneaded on counter top, resting as necessary to stop the dough from tearing too much. You will not be able to develop as much gluten in a pastry or weak flour, so you will not get as strong a windowpane test as you would using bread flour.

  4. I first gave this dough a coil fold after 15 minutes to help strength the gluten further as it felt a little rough still coming out of mixing. Gave it another coil fold an hour later, total bulk proof was about 2 hours, until ~50% or more increase in volume.

  5. Preshaped and bench rested for 15 minutes, then shaped, proofed for 1.5 hours.

  6. Baked at 450F for 40 minutes on a hot baking steel, first ~20 minutes with steam

Notes

Taste is nothing special, just white bread, no tang. Crumb is fluffy and tender, definitely not as chewy as you’d except from using bread flour. Crumb is also pretty tight and fine. I wouldn’t call it dense, but to get a more open crumb with large irregular holes you would definitely need to use stronger flour. This is still good bread though, very happy it came out looking so nice!

Now some tips when using weaker flours:

  • Lower the hydration. I used way less water in this bread than I typically do for country breads, but it did not feel overly stiff at all. Weaker flours will absorb less water and very quickly become a sticky mess if you try to use the same amount of water you’d use for bread flour.

  • No extended autolyse or autolyse at all. The enzymes active in the autolyse will weaken your dough further.

  • Shorter fermentation. A weaker dough is going to be less fermentation tolerant. This why I used a much larger amount of preferment/starter than normal, to shorten bulk fermentation and proofing

  • Gentle mixing, handling, and shaping. Doughs made with weaker flour will not be able to take as much punishment.

A good article for reference