Here at The Simply Filled Pantry we want to help you bring high quality ingredients to your food, enjoy your baking, while keeping it simple and affordable. To that end, let's talk about choosing the "right" flour.
In general, soft white flour is considered pastry flour for baking powder and baking soda recipes and hard red and hard white (ancient, heritage or modern hybrids) are considered high protein to develop gluten in yeast recipes...but...there are many options and few finite rules.
Playing around with what you like can be fun to see the difference in how a recipe behaves and tastes. If that is overwhelming and you like a finite rule, just stick with soft white for pastry style recipes and hard red/white for yeast; even if you start with the basic premise to gain confidence, later you may want to experiment.
For those who want to play with texture, taste and behavior, let your creativity run free!
Within the category of soft white flour, you could also choose to use einkorn flour and yield a different overall taste, still with the lighter texture of the soft white like our Frederick. You can also mix these flours or add some hard wheat. Soft white is also used in part with some yeasted recipes like this dinner roll. It will be lighter and fluffier.
The thickness of the bran is a key difference between hard wheats and soft white wheats like Frederick or einkorn. Bran can cut gluten strands if not handled gently and could limit the rise in yeasted baking. Hard wheats, with thicker bran, can be used in typical pastry baking but will yield a little less fluffy result due to the weight of the bran. I really like the texture from hard white over soft white in many of my cookies. Just our preference.
Another good example is my standard einkorn crackers. Using all einkorn results in a savory, thin shortbread-like flakey cracker. I have also used 100% emmer which yields a more hearty, earthy flavor, or sometimes I use both. Adding in 25-30% ground oat groats tends to lighten up the cracker's overall texture.
Another option is to substitute up to 50% of the wheat flour with oat, barley or rye (rye has a high satiety element). Try this in yeasted or baking powder/soda baking and see how a little variation on a recipe can bring a whole new creation to your pantry.
So when you see a recipe that uses some named hard white and Kamut, for example, read that as just hard wheat and try what you like or use what is on hand. Breading for fish or meat you could use any flour because you do not need a rise so don't waste the left over flour.
Overall, the grain you choose is up for personal preference limited only by what you are asking the flour to do in the recipe and your taste preference.
Additionally if you are new to freshly milled, and swapping out a traditional flour recipe, expect to add 1-2 Tablespoons of flour to every 1C of flour in the recipe. Commercial flour is extremely compacted. This is a good reason to write recipes by weight not volume. Over time, I recommend writing in the weight of ingredients (especially flour) that works on favorite recipes to yield consistent results. Our "1 Cup Flour Equivalents in Ounces and Grams," can be helpful as a starting point in converting traditional recipes.
We carry a great variety of organic grains; ancient and modern, all tested to ensure they produce results we are sure you'll love. If you have a special grain request, please reach out. We are happy to bring in a special order for you, just ask!