are branded flours better??

[Asparagus and Lemons]

Hey Aimz,
I am a pastry chef by trade and at all the 8 different places I have worked at, we have used the cheapest plain flour possible.
However if you are going to make bread, yes you use bakers flour, and for light cakes and sponge cakes you would use high ratio flour. But you cannot seem to get this at the supermarket. But when comparing brands.. plain flour is plain flour. It does the same thing. Self-raising on the other hand, they are all made slightly different and some have more raising agents than others, but that has nothing to do with brands, just batch's. So it's safe to use plain flour and add 1tsp baking powder to every cup of flour that way it is always consistant.

As to freezing flour, yes it can be done if you want it to last over a year, but it must be in an air tight container. If it's kept in an airtight container in the pantry it will also last a while.
This can also be done with nuts, almond and hazelnut meals, when they are put in an airtight container and into the freezer, they can last for years!

HTH

[Rouge]

I have had cupcakes made with expensive flours and cupcakes made with inexpensive flours and TBH its more about how you USE the flour than they type.

Some cake recipes (like sponge) and some cupcake recipes call for cake flour and plain flour due to the fact that plain flour has less gluten (as Nelle said) and as a result you get a lighter fluffier sponge.

I have different types of flour as in bread flour, cake flour, pizza flour, pasta flour, plain flour and self raising flour (although I avoid using SR at all costs as the raising agents can go bad quickly when combined with flour) as for branded flour no.

So basically the same as what everyone else says.

It doesn't matter in most cases it matters more what YOU do with it... and if you can bake well you can use aldi or anchor and get the same results

[Netix]

Thanks for that info. I don't think my self raising flour has the chance to go 'bad', and I think I have actually had dumplings turn out better using plain flour + raising agent.