My loaf turned into a pancake after I swapped bread flour for AP flour

I was out of bread flour last Sunday and thought 'how different can all-purpose really be?' Big mistake. I was making my usual sourdough loaf which normally springs up beautifully in the oven. This one came out flat as a pancake with a crust so thin it cracked the second I touched it. The crumb was gummy too like it hadn't set right. Turns out AP flour just doesn't have the protein content to hold the structure for a long fermentation. I had to use 3 cups of all-purpose for a single loaf and it was basically a loss. Now I keep a backup bag of bread flour in the freezer so I never get caught again. Has anyone else had a flour substitution go totally wrong like this?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_thomas28d ago

Oh man this is giving me flashbacks lol. I once tried to make pizza dough with all purpose and it turned into this sad floppy disc that wouldn't even hold its own weight. The crust came out tasting like cardboard too which was the real kicker. I had to eat my shame slices with extra cheese just to get through it. Now I hoard bread flour like it's gonna get banned or something.

margaret_taylor4228d ago

Wait, has nobody tried just using all purpose but adjusting the WATER instead? Thats the thing about flour, different brands and even different bags of the same brand absorb moisture totally differently. If your dough was a floppy mess that couldnt hold shape, you probably added too much water for that particular flour. I always start with less water and add it slowly until the dough feels right. And for the cardboard taste, that sounds like you didnt let it rise long enough or the yeast was dead. Room temp water matters too, not hot not cold. Ive made plenty of bad pizzas learning this stuff, but it was never just the flour type causing the whole failure.

jennys7228d agoProlific Poster

Man come on, it's just pizza dough. You're acting like you survived a war crime or something with all this "shame slices" talk. It's flour and water, not brain surgery. You probably just messed up the ratios or didn't let it rest enough. Bread flour helps but it's not some magic fix for bad technique. I've made decent pizza with all purpose plenty of times when I ran out of the good stuff. You're overthinking this whole thing.