Flour Substitutions

We love flour, and the choices we make provide flavor and nutrition to our bread. Wherever possible, we recommend the use of freshly milled, local flours. In this way, we extend our Baking the World A Better Place to foster a vibrant regional grain economy and deepen our respect for providing local food banks with items made from high-quality ingredients. At the same time, our love of baking and need to create a sustainable non-profit organization creates a winning combination. Our volunteer bakers are able to purchase the flour at a steep discount to retail pricing and we manage to fundraise at the same time.

But what if you need to make a substitution? Substitutions are sometimes needed.

Here are the Washington recommended flours – used 50/50 in our bread loaf – and their suitable substitutions:

• Trail Blazer – High Extraction – T85 Bread Flour (Ash count .85%)*
  • Cairnsprings – Organic Expresso Artisan Bread Flour
  • Cairnsprings – Sequoia Bread Flour
    
• Fairhaven Fine Bread Flour – Whole Grain Flour
  • Cairnsprings – Organic Expresso Whole Grain Flour
  • Mill Your Own Whole Grain Flour
  • Other Whole Grain Bread Flour
    
• The bread formula differs slightly in different locations. For example in California we recommend using Central Milling’s T110 flour. That is a one-stop shop; no “blending” is needed for our loaf. It is the equivalent of the two mixtures above. If you have a different formula you will find flour coaching on your formulas page off the volunteer dashboard.

*Note Trail Blazer flour has had some inconsistencies in it’s enzymatic activity. The current recommendation is to add a pinch of diastatic malt – or substitute for one of the other T85 flours. See Details Here