Flour Part 1: A guide to Swiss flour types.

The series on flour will include essential information on the availability and purpose of the different types and types of flour available in Switzerland.

I will start by identifying the types of flour we know from Poland and assigning to them, their local equivalents. I've been passionately baking breads for a few years now and in the next parts of the series I'll give you a tried and tested method for rye sourdough, its maintenance and most delicious use. But sourdough bread isn't the only bread you can eat, so other gluten-free and gluten-free baked goods will also appear.

Flour types

The grain of a cereal consists of the endosperm (approximately 83%), the germ (approximately 3%) and the seed coat (approximately 14%). In the flour-making process, the grain parts are separated from each other in the desired proportions. White flour consists exclusively of the endosperm. However, the main sources of minerals are the fruit and seed casing (from which the bran is formed) and the germ. The germ is also a source of vitamins and fats. Whole-grain flours, as the name suggests, contain the germ and can therefore go rancid and have a shorter shelf life.

It's not worth it to stockpile more whole wheat flour!

Polish flour types are defined in terms of the amount of ash that remains after burning a sample of flour.

The ash consists almost entirely of minerals. This means that the more ash that remains after a sample has been burnt, the richer in minerals the flour was. The percentage of ash, e.g. 0.55% , 0.75% , multiplied by 1000 gives us the flour type, e.g. type 550 is cake flour and type 750 is bread flour.
The main cereals grown for flour in Poland are wheat and rye.

The following types of wheat flour are distinguished:

• 450 cake
• 500 poznańska, wrocławska, krupczatka
• 550 luxury
• 650 bun
• 750 breadfruit
• 850 breadfruit
• 1400 sieve (ash content from 1.2 to 1.6 per cent, composition is whole endosperm and finer parts of the tegument, coarser bran is sieved - hence the name)
• 1850 graham (ash content between 1.6 and 2 per cent, wholemeal flour but more floury than wholemeal)
• 2000 wholemeal (ash content 2 per cent, whole wheat flour)

and rye flour

• 580 light
• 720 python
• 1400 sieve
• 1850 Starogardzka
• 2000 wholemeal
• (Sieve, Starogard and wholemeal have properties analogous to their wheat counterparts)

Swiss flour types are distinguished on the basis of a measure analogous to an extract ( Der Ausmahlungsgrad, die Ausbeute).

Extract determines how much flour we get from 100 kg of grain. Light flour contains up to 30 % of whole grain (calculated "from the centre" of the grain), so we say it has an extract of 30. Flours with an extract of less than 75 consist of endosperm only, only flours with an extract of more than 75 have an admixture of bran, and with an extract of 98, we say it is whole-grain flour.

Flours in Switzerland are primarily divided into ordinary flour (Normalmehl) and special flours (Spezialmehle).
Ordinary flour is only wheat flour (Weizenmehl) , special flours are spelt flour (Dinkelmehl), rye flour (Roggenmehl), barley flour (Gerstenmehl), five-grain flour - wheat,rye, barley, millet, oats (Fünfkornmehl-Weizen, Roggen, Gerste, Hirse, Hafer), and flours with the addition of wheat germ, oat flakes and seeds.

If I've left something out, if you're looking for something or if you've even found something - please share in the comments, I'm happy to answer questions and, as always, I'm very curious about new things.

I encourage you to keep an eye on the events at the Women's Village, and if you want to keep up to date with them all - subscribe to the newsletter below !

Patrycja Ingielewicz