While flour is a great staple ingredient to have in your home, you may be overwhelmed with the types of flour available and how different recipes will call for specific types of flour.
For instance, you may be curious as to what high protein flour is and what high protein flour is for. I did the research, and this is what I discovered!
What Is High Protein Flour?
High protein flour refers to any flour that is high in protein, which means the flour needs to have at least 12-15% protein, such as bread flour. Protein refers to gluten, which is what makes your recipes have structure and rise. Therefore, you can use high protein flour and high gluten flour interchangeably.
Do you want to learn what high protein flour is made of, what can be considered high protein flour, and what you can substitute for high protein flour? Keep reading!
What Is High Protein Flour Made Of?
Typically, high protein flour is made from hard grain wheat, and hard red wheat is the most common type of hard grain wheat used.
What Is Considered High Protein Flour?
Typically, any flour that contains 12-15% protein can be considered high protein flour, which includes bread flour.
What Is High Protein Flour Used For?
Normally, high protein flour is used for yeast-risen baking products and crusty, chewy bread because high protein flour provides the ideal texture and structure for these recipes.
Flour that is high in protein means that it contains a lot of gluten, which provides an upward rise and sturdy structure.
For instance, continuously mixing or kneading dough that contains high protein flour allows more gluten to develop, which will make your dough elastic and rise more.
Therefore, you will see high protein flour commonly used for yeast bread recipes, pizza crust, bagels, and more.
Can I Use High Protein Flour For Cake?
Generally, you cannot use high protein flour to make the cake because high protein flour will not provide your cake with the ideal texture.
Normally, most cake recipes will require a tender and delicate texture that comes from low protein flour like cake flour.
On the other hand, high protein flour creates a much denser and chewier texture that is ideal for pizza crust and bread loaves, which can ruin a cake recipe.
For instance, cake recipes usually involve a good amount of mixing, and overmixing high protein flour can lead to more gluten development, which is what you want to avoid when making cakes.
Is High Protein Flour The Same As Bread Flour?
High protein flour can be the same as bread flour because bread flour is high in protein since bread flour contains roughly 12-15% flour.
When you see bread flour in the store, the bread flour is usually meant for recipes that require a lot of structure and rise, which is why the bread flour will likely have a lot of protein.
Is High Protein Flour The Same As High Gluten Flour?
High protein flour is the same as high gluten flour because protein and gluten virtually mean the same thing in baking.
When there is a lot of protein present in the flour, there will be a lot of gluten in your flour as well, so many manufacturers will use the terms high gluten and high protein interchangeably.
Is High Protein Flour The Same As Vital Wheat Gluten?
Generally, high protein flour is not the same as vital wheat gluten since high protein flour has 12-15% gluten whereas vital wheat gluten contains 75% more gluten and very little starch.
Moreover, vital wheat gluten is usually used as a supplement to add to low gluten flour (like all-purpose flour) to mimic high protein flour.
Is All-Purpose Flour The Same As High Protein Flour?
All-purpose flour is not the same as high protein flour since high protein flour contains more gluten than all-purpose flour since all-purpose flour usually has 8-11% gluten.
Additionally, all-purpose flour is usually made from a mix of soft and hard wheat while high protein flour is normally only made of hard red wheat.
How Do I Know If My Flour Is High In Protein?
An easy way to see if your flour is high in protein is to see what type of flour it is. For instance, bread flour is usually high in protein because bread flour is meant to have a lot of protein.
Another way to determine how much protein is in your flour is to look at the nutrition facts on the packaging of your flour.
Look for the protein content on the nutrition facts, and that is how much protein is in your flour.
For instance, if it says that there are 13 grams of protein for every 100 grams of flour, your flour contains 13% protein.
You will need to calculate the protein content if the flour measurement on the nutrition facts is different.
For example, if 30 grams of flour contains 4 grams of protein, you can multiply 4 by 100 (to represent 100 grams of flour) to get 400.
Next, you can divide 400 by 30, which will leave you will 13.33 and your flour will have 13.33% protein.
What Can I Substitute For High Protein Flour?
If you want to mimic high protein flour, you can add a bit of vital wheat gluten to your all-purpose flour to add more gluten to your flour.
However, this does not perfectly mimic high protein flour and you will not know exactly how much protein will be in your flour.
If you do not have vital wheat gluten, you can use all-purpose flour as a substitute by itself, but you will not have the same structure and rise.
Take a look at our related articles to discover what konjac flour is, what Kamut flour is, and what kuttu flour is.
Conclusion
High protein flour is flour that usually contains around 12-15% protein, and an example of high protein flour is bread flour.
Typically, high protein flour means that the flour is high in gluten, which is ideal for yeast-risen recipes and crusty, chewy bread.