Baking With Pasta Flour - Easter Buns

Flour shortages meant that this year's Hot Cross Buns were made with pasta flour. This was a first for me. Never, in the ordinary course of things, would I choose organic durum wheat pasta flour, at three times the price of my usual flour. But, it was either that or gluten-free.

When I went to the shop, we had a little discussion; the shopkeeper, another customer and I, about whether pasta flour would be any good for white sauce, or baking in general. Upon studying the label (Protein: 12g per 100g) I decided that it seemed reasonably 'strong' and bought a couple of bags, to give it a go. Better than nothing, eh?

This is the flour I bought. Durum wheat is just another type of wheat, similar to the wheat commonly ground into bread flour. The protein content and hardness of the grain make it particularly suitable for making pasta, apparently, but I suspected it would be good enough for other types of baking too. This is clearly marketed as pasta flour, but my eagle-eyes also spotted the words 'and pizza', which is basically bread, so definitely worth taking a chance.

Before I made hot cross buns, I made a loaf of ordinary white bread, with my new-found pasta flour.

This was the dough. Looks normal enough, doesn't it? Nothing untoward about the durum wheatiness.

This was the resulting loaf, after we had eaten most of it and I remembered that I had wanted to take a picture. Just an ordinary loaf, really, albeit an expensive one.

It had a good crumb*:
*You what? I discuss 'crumb' about half-way down this article on dough hydration, if you're curious.

And it made excellent toast:

There was no discernible difference from my normal flour (except that I am more of a wholemeal person and this was most definitely white, much to everyone else's delight.)

In other news, it was Easter. Quite strange not to be celebrating it with a big family meal. We could easily have been eleven round the table, had it not been for Social Distancing.

Last week I was (annoyingly, probably) chirpy and positive about us all being at home together, enjoying the calmer schedule. This week I found I was a bit less delighted with the situation and a bit less Laura Markham in my parenting. Cabin fever was mentioned. The long-weekend for Easter came just at the right moment for me to drop any attempt at a schedule and give us all a break.

And special chocolate arrived, courtesy of a very lovely kind friend. A little bit of special chocolate does seem to help in so many situations.

Vegan. Deliciousness. When Ailey Mae's is open for business again, I'm their new biggest fan.

Spring is very much springing. We had frogspawn appear in our pond this year (as opposed to being put there by us, in previous years). The few tadpoles that we are observing indoors are growing fast. My daughter caught this excellent shot of a tadpole smile:

And the hot cross buns were delicious.

The pasta flour performed like any other wheat flour that I have used. No doubt an expert would be able to point to subtle differences but, from a practical point of view, yummy buns were made and consumed, which was all that mattered to me.

Conclusion? Durum wheat flour is perfectly fine to bake with, if a little pricy. I'd go so far as to assert that any wheat flour would be ok for bread. I said as much in this article 'Do I Really Need Strong Flour?' (Spoiler: The answer is no.) Maybe not prize-winning, professional-standard bread (although who knows?!) but none-the-less tasty and family-feeding in these times when we might be stuck with the last flour in the shop.

How's the flour situation with you?