ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR IS a kitchen staple, and we use it in a variety of ways, from baking breads, cakes, cookies, and biscuits to making roux, sauces, and pastas to coating fried foods. But despite the all-encompassing name, not all all-purpose flours are the same. In the test kitchen, we stock two all-purpose flours—one higher-protein flour and one moderate-protein flour—and employ each strategically, as we’ve found that they perform differently.
To find out what causes these performance differences, we rounded up five top-selling products. Many brands make both bleached and unbleached versions of all-purpose flour, but we opted for the unbleached versions since we’ve
All the flours in our lineup produced acceptable breads, cakes, and biscuits, but the bread loaves we made with the higher-protein flours were particularly well risen, with…