Thursday, April 9, 2020

Found Flour

All around the world, we are almost all in some kind of confinement or other. And there has been a run on certain products. It started with a run on toilet paper. Then, pasta and some other dry goods. In France, at least in Nogent, it has settled on flour, for the moment. Yesterday, Bio C'est Bon, a French "organic" grocery chain, published an ad on Facebook, I think it was. I clicked and learned that they have a "click and collect" service and it is available at our local store that just opened a couple of months ago. I created my account and clicked away for a few items, including some flour, T65, which they had! I had to wait an hour until it was time to leave to collect my bag.
I walked to the store -- nice to get out for a 'long" walk of 10 minutes to and another 10 minutes back. My bag did not have flour. The manager showed me his copy of my order on which the flour had a red X, showing it was not available. My email confirmation of the order and bill showed that it was. Well, he didn't have it, so there was no point in arguing. I have to wait to see if I was charged for it, or not. He said he had some T150 flour, and was surprised that I bought it. On the way back home, I stopped at our corner Franprix and stuck my head inside to ask if they had flour -- and they did! Okay, it still was not the T65 that I wanted; it's T80. I bought it. This is a time for experimentation, right?
This brings up the discussion of the different qualities of flour in France.
Type 45 : White flour for pastry, the finest quality.
Type 55 : Ordinary white flour for pie crusts, white bread, pizza.Type 65 : Specialty white flour, good for pizzas.Type 80 : Part white, part whole wheat.Type 110 : Whole wheat.Type 150 : Whole wheat with chaff.
Usually in the "organic" category, they start at T65. The higher the number, the coarser the flour, basically.
I think the most common type is 45. I didn't realize it until I started looking at the labels. Since I mostly made cake, that's what I found and it was good. One day, I saw a less expensive flour and looked at the label. It was T55. It's perfectly fine for cakes as well as pie crusts. Then, I wanted organic flour ("bio" in French) and discovered it was T65. Guess what? It's fine for cake, and anything else I want to do. 
And here I was with T150. I made some bread. It's a bit denser than I expected, but it tastes good.
Update: I relied on Glen's instructions in https://youtu.be/4gmCrbBGQy0https://youtu.be/4gmCrbBGQy0
And I have my nut-sized nugget, fed and watered, in the fridge waiting for one of his follow-up recipes in a few days.

3 comments:

  1. For that Type 150, try a heartier loaf like David Lebovitz's take on the Ballymaloe Irish Brown Bread! 150 is the closest I was able to find to graham flour in France (at my Bio c' Bon, of course) and it turns out lovely. (https://www.davidlebovitz.com/ballymaloe-irish-brown-bread-recipe/)

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  2. Thank you, Elizabeth. I'll try that.

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  3. I've looked and it is very similar to the method I used, although I did not add any kind of sugar to the yeast and just fed it and let it bloom overnight.

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