Billy wrote:
>
> Oh but, but there is something unique about Gold Medal. It is a blend
> of select hard and soft wheat.
>
> On the other hand White Lily is ONLY soft wheat flour great for
> biscuits, etc.
>
> From hardest to softest flours:

durum wheat flour and semolina flour
> (typically used for making pastas),

whole wheat flour and graham flour
> (typically mixed with all-purpose or bread flour to make bread or
> baked goods),

bread flour (typically used for making yeast breads),
>

all-purpose flour (can be used for breads and baked goods),

pastry
> flour (typically used for pastries),

and cake flour (typically used
> for cakes).


The above is the way I remember the list from hardest to softest too
(except I thought that whole wheat, since the bran and germ have no
gluten, are considered softer than all-purpose).


In addition, _Baking Illustrated_ gives the following percentages of
protein in all purpose flours:

King Arthur 11.7%
Heckers/Cresota 11.5-11.9%
Hodgson Mill 11.0%
Gold Medal 10.5%
Pilsbury 10.5%


For croissants, you want the right amount of protein. Too much, and the
final product will be gluey, the texture of bagels. Too little, and the
product won't hold together. You'll get pure crumbs. Since I took my
recipe from _Baking Illustrated_, I thought I'd go with the sort of
flour they recommended for croissants (GM or Pilsbury). But then I had
KA in the house and used it. When we try again, we'll use the GM or
Pilsbury.


We now have a list of things to do differently next time. They're all
to bring us closer to the BI recipe: get the salt right, switch flours,
use the cuisinart instead of hand kneading, pay closer attention to
keeping the dough cold, check oven temperature. Then, after we've done
all that, if we still don't like our results, we'll look for a different
recipe or more information.


For one thing, I'm not sure about the instructions given for the turns.
It doesn't seem like it would produce enough layers. I attended the
Culinary Institute 20 years ago and don't remember much, but I do have a
picture in my head of the turns being done differently.


Jim and I also have a question about the oven temperature. In addition
to thinking that the croissants didn't taste right (probably due to the
lack of salt), they seemed underbaked to me, pasty or doughy in the
center when the outsides were browned. They took longer than the
recipe's 18-22 minutes to bake.


Jim would solve the problem by putting the oven temp higher than 400
degrees. I think that would make it worse, would make them burn on the
outside before the centers were cooked at all. I'd lower the oven temp
to 350 and bake them longer. I'm also thinking that we need larger
cookie sheets to bake them on so there's more room for air to circulate
between them. Any thoughts?


Thanks to everyone who wrote.


--Lia