We go through about 200 pounds of flour a week. That's roughly 50 bags across bread flour, all-purpose, pastry flour, and a few specialty flours we keep on hand for specific recipes. What's in those bags determines what ends up in your hands — and the difference between a mediocre croissant and a great one often starts here.
Most home bakers pick up whatever bag is on the shelf at the grocery store. That's fine. But when you're running a professional kitchen that makes thousands of pastries a month, flour isn't a commodity. It's a variable.
Protein Content Is Everything
Flour is essentially starch and protein. When you add water and mix, the proteins (glutenin and gliadin) combine to form gluten — the elastic network that gives bread its structure and chew. More protein means more gluten-forming potential.
- Pastry flour: 8–9% protein. Very low gluten development. Used for pie crust, muffins, scones — where you want tender and crumbly, not chewy.
- All-purpose: 10–12% protein. The middle ground. Good for many things, specialized for nothing.
- Bread flour: 12–14% protein. High gluten. What you want for sourdough, baguettes, sandwich loaves — anywhere structure and chew matter.
For our croissants and laminated pastries, we actually use a mix. A bread flour base gives us the structure to support dozens of butter layers, but pure bread flour can make laminated dough too tough. We blend in some all-purpose to get the right balance of extensibility and strength.
Where the Flour Comes From
We source most of our bread flour from a regional mill in Ohio. It's stone-milled, which means the whole wheat berry is ground more slowly. Stone milling generates less heat and keeps more of the bran and germ in contact with the flour during milling — this adds trace flavor compounds and a slightly warmer color that you might notice in our sourdough crumb.
For our pastry flour, we use a standard roller-milled flour that's been bleached. Yes, bleached. I know that sounds like a compromise, but bleached pastry flour has a finer texture and binds fat differently than unbleached — for scones and muffins it actually makes a more tender crumb.
Extraction Rate and Whole Grain
Extraction rate refers to how much of the wheat berry ends up in the final flour. White flour is roughly 70–75% extraction — the bran and most of the germ are removed. Whole wheat flour is closer to 100%. At 100% extraction, you get more fiber and flavor but also more bran, which physically cuts gluten strands and makes for denser bread.
Our honey whole wheat loaf uses 80% extraction flour — more whole grain than white flour, but not so much bran that the loaf suffers structurally. It's a deliberate choice, not a compromise.
The Practical Takeaway
You don't need to obsess over this at home. But if your bread has always come out flat, or your pie crust is too tough, it might be worth looking at the protein content on the flour you're using. A $3 bag of pastry flour from a grocery store can genuinely improve your scones more than any other change you'll make.
And if you ever want to taste the difference between a croissant made with commodity flour and one made with ours — you know where to find us.