dedtired- Thank you for your kind words, but no, there's no blog or web site. I just hang out here and a couple other message boards, and food science is a long-time study and hobby of mine that is necessary as a Foods Judge at County Fairs. I have to be able to tell people what went right, wrong, or how to improve their skills and their finished products. Gold Medal All-Purpose flour is a mixture of hard and soft wheat. Hard wheat provides enough protein to make a fairly good loaf of bread, and soft wheat so you can make a fairly good quick bread - but it's not the optimal choice for much of anything other than soft dinner rolls. There are better flour choices for yeast and naturally-leavened bread, pizza crust, bagels, hard rolls, etc., and better choices when you don't want a lot of gluten development - pastry, cookies, quick breads, cakes.... It wasn't until the advent of the bread machine in the 1980's that things like "high-gluten bread flour" and "vital wheat gluten" were even heard of for home use. All we had was all-purpose and an occasional find of whole wheat flour or rye flour (usually sold by hippies in a dark little whole foods or health food store - LOL). So we can thank that industry for giving us a broader choice of flour products. Today I work from a variety of over 30 different grains/seeds/beans for milling into flour and incorporating in our diet. bbstx- I grew up in the middle of wheat fields, so it's not surprising your dad knew what his wheat would be used for. Yes, soft red wheat is used in cake flour and also suited for cookies and some pastries, but it's a completely different variety of wheat from durum wheat. Most of the durum wheat produced in the United States is grown in North Dakota (76%), and some in Montana, South Dakota, and Minnesota and it's primary use is in pasta/spaghetti/macaroni but it's also used to make puffed breakfast cereals and wheat germ. The bran and germ are removed and the endosperm is coarsely milled into semolina flour, which we use most often for making pasta, although I have a few favorite recipes where I add it to yeast breads, but I mill my own using whole grain durum. When you mill your own flour and you forget which variety of wheat (hard or soft) you milled, all you have to do is rub it between your fingers. Hard wheat flour is fairly gritty while soft wheat feels more like talcum powder. -Grainlady

--Whole wheat pastry flour is milled from low-gluten, low-protein, soft wheat varieties. I use soft white wheat for pastry flour, or anywhere I don't need a lot of gluten development. Spelt is another good wholegrain choice when you don't need a lot of gluten development. Spelt has a gluten level that is 5,000 parts per million; compared to wheat which begins at 50,000 parts per million and go up from there. --Technically, "all-purpose" flour was developed commercially for bleached/unbleached flour from a mixture of hard wheat and soft wheat. There's enough hard wheat so it has enough gluten to make yeast breads, and enough soft wheat flour so it makes decent quick breads, pastry or cakes - so it covers "all purposes", but it's NOT the optimum choice of flour for most things, other than soft dinner rolls. We've just developed our flour use from the most common commercial flour available - all-purpose - with occasional moves to Southern all-purpose for biscuits and quick breads, and the even more elusive cake flour for beautiful tender cakes. Even in the world of commercial bleached/unbleached all-purpose flour there are great differences... Northern all-purpose flour (King Arthur and Robin Hood - 11-12) have a higher protein level than National Brands (Gold Medal and Pillsbury 10-12). Southern all-purpose flour (7.5-9.5) is milled from soft wheat, so it's best used for quick breads, biscuits, muffins, pastry, cookies, cakes - foods where you don't want a lot of gluten development. A mix of 3:2 hard wheat to soft white wheat is a great "all-purpose" mixture when you want soft yeast rolls. Otherwise, choosing a mix of hard wheat and soft wheat is less than optimum for other baked goods. --Whole wheat "bread" flour would mean a high protein level milled from hard wheat. Bleached/Unbleached bread flour has a protein level of 13-14. I've milled wheat that was 16% protein and made yeast bread with it, but it takes a lot more kneading to develop the gluten and you find you have tough bread as a result of the high protein level. This also happens when you add too much vital wheat gluten to a recipe, so more (protein/gluten) is not necessarily better. The protein levels of wheat I purchase is generally between 13% and 14% protein, which is more than enough to raise a lofty loaf of bread. If you tend to get short squatty loaves of 100% whole wheat bread, there are other factors you need to address besides protein/gluten levels - such as stop using a (quick mix) direct dough method and switch to a sponge method. A sponge will help soften the bran - the sharp edges of bran can cut the gluten strands. A sponge method also helps develop the gluten without kneading. Adding an acid ingredient (vinegar, lemon juice, ascorbic acid, etc) to the recipe has a positive effect. There is a substance in wheat germ called Gluthione which breaks down the gluten strands. Adding an acid, such as ascorbic acid, counteracts the negative effects of Glutathione. Ascorbic acid helps to prevent the gluten bonds from breaking down and will repair the gluten bonds, so you'll get a high-rising loaf of 100% whole wheat bread. I generally add 1/8 t. ascorbic acid per loaf of bread when making bread that includes wheatgerm (as a single ingredient or from whole wheat flour). -Something we tend to forget, or possibly didn't even know, hard wheat wasn't even available for milling until the late 1870's when the German Mennonites arrived here in Kansas and brought the granddad of all hard winter wheat varieties, Turkey Red, with them from Europe. Prior to the developing of the hard winter varieties of wheat, all flour was milled from soft wheat. The mills liked soft wheat for milling into flour because it was easy to grind in one pass through the mill, and had a much larger extraction of flour. Soft wheat tends to be a plumper seed with more endosperm, while hard winter wheat is small and rather wrinkled with more bran and less endosperm. You can tell the difference between hard and soft wheat when you mill it at home - the hard wheat flour is more coarse and gritty from the bran, while soft wheat renders a very soft, talcum powder feeling flour. --"Bread flour" or high protein flour milled from hard wheat, was available to commercial bakers and they referenced it by calling it "strong" wheat flour. Strong and weak wheats indicate a wheat or flour's baking strength. It wasn't until the advent of the bread machine in the 1980's that high-gluten bread flour became available for home use. Up until that time all-purpose flour, which is a medium-protein level flour, was about the only kind of flour available for home use. If "whole wheat bread flour" is called for, it means use a "regular" whole wheat flour which is milled from hard wheat, instead of "pastry" whole wheat flour, which is milled from soft wheat. -Grainlady

Jasdip.....we have an ARC that literally has it ALL! :0) I got my Zo for $15, like new, then just printed the booklet online. It's like that for everything! I actually DID spend $200 on my Hitachi when it was new.....stupid...since it works like the $50 ones. :0)(I purchased it becasue a GF had it, so we could compare results. She said it did everything, it doesn't.). The ZO is "outstanding" because you can add heavy ingredients like oatmeal or use bakers yeast(slower rise time) and it will let you stop the machine, reset one stage...then continue at THAT stage. No other machine I've read about will do THAT. It's capacity is the same as all bread machines. No.....6 cups is too much. It would rise up and make a mess. :0)

Oh! Interesting. I know a guy who had something like that. He got food poisoning from tempura and couldn't face any Japanese restaurant for years after. You're right. It is similar to my brain telling me to spit out mango juice flavored vitamins even though I figured out they'd be safe to eat. :) Allergies are weird too, though, like the way many people can't eat a cooked egg without a violent intestinal reaction but can eat non-eggy baked goods with some eggs in them with no problem. There really are some people who can take onion powder or very cooked down onions, but if they're pretty solid they get intestinal reactions. Bossyvossy, Have you been checking out the Cooking forum? Grainlady and others have been posting more good information about gluten free baking there.