Myth #3: All-Purpose Flour Should Be Avoided in Bread Making

Patently false. If all-purpose flour were so bad for bread, I seriously doubt we'd all be using it. The key to using the right flour is to know when to use which type. All-purpose flour consists of a combination of different types of wheat, sometimes called "hard" and "soft" wheats. The mixture of the two types results in a protein content for all-purpose flour that is a little bit lower than bread flour. You can use it anywhere you'd use bread flour, but the reverse is not true.

Bread flour, typically has a slightly higher protein content than all-purpose flour and contains a little bit of vitamin C or potassium bromate along with very small amounts of malted barley flour. These additional ingredients help your bread by helping the yeast work a little harder to produce the gasses that make it loftier and also to help the dough retain those gasses so the bread doesn't deflate. But you can't always use bread flour where you would use your all-purpose flour.

I've found that making rustic breads begs for the use of bread flour. In rustic breads, the bread flour helps low-gluten grains like rye or barely work more efficiently, resulting in bread that's a little loftier and a little less dense. I personally think that, in most common bread recipes, loaves made exclusively with bread flour end up being overly chewy and tough. The simple fact is that all-purpose flour really does work wonderfully for most common bread recipes.