Soft Wheat Flour

Soft Wheat Flour: Types, Characteristics, and Quality Indices

Soft wheat flour can be organic, conventional, type 0, type 00, type 1, and type 2. Organic flours do not contain residues of chemical substances such as herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, making them particularly suitable when choosing wholemeal flour, as it also contains the outer parts of the grain, which are more likely to trap such substances. The type (type 0, 00...) represents the level of refinement to which the flour has been subjected; type 00 is the most refined, followed by 0, 1, 2, and finally wholemeal. The more refined the flour, the more the noble parts of the grain are removed (minerals, fibers, vitamins...), but at the same time, it improves the technological qualities (the flour generates doughs that rise more and are more resistant to processing...). There are also other indices used to "catalog" flours; one is W (double zero) and the other is P/L (pi over elle). The higher the W, the more the flour can withstand long fermentations and the addition of different ingredients (eggs, sugar, butter...), or it can be used to strengthen weak flours. Conversely, the lower the W, the more suitable the flour is for preparing sweets with instant leavening, such as shortcrust pastry and sponge cake (allowing for exceptional crumbly texture), or for medium-short leavening. Finally, P/L represents the ratio of how much strength is needed to "stretch" the dough (tenacity) and how much it stretches without tearing (extensibility). Flours with a P/L of 0.55 are called "balanced flours", while those with a higher P/L are tenacious or very extensible if they have a value lower than 0.55.