Maybe 2nd time is charm?

very similar to my roll recipe ... rather than two cups of water, it uses 1 cup water and 1 cup of hot milk ... instead of the oil, I use butter. Some of the best Parker house-type rolls around. I arrange them in a pie tin and freeze; when frozen, slip them in a 1 qt zip bag.

In a recipe containing 6 cups of flour I seriously question if you could discern the difference between 1 tablespoon and 3 tablespoons of flour.

Linda, it's the sugar I reduced from 3 TBSP to 1. Some people like it sweeter, I don't care for sweet bread for sandwiches myself. Reducing the sugar did not affect the yeast action at all that I could tell. My question about the flour is whether durum flour adds anything.

I will be interested in hearing how it does for you!

Most bread flour is durum wheat....because it's higher in protein. I am guessing your bread flour and your durum flour are the same thing. Durum wheat is mostly used for pastas and semolina grind flour.

Durham is a hard or high protein wheat. The protein in flour is where the gluten is, so it is a stronger flour in terms of holding a rise. One particular brand I looked at had a higher protein level than typical in bread flour. It may well be used in bread flour -- which can be a blend of different varieties. It would certainly be on the higher side. It is also used for pasta. Semolina is a coarser grind.

OK I have a bag of KAF bread flour here. It says that it is milled from 100% U.S. Hard Red Wheat Grown on American Farms. Protein Content is 12.7%. The bag of KAF Durum Flour does not give the protein content but says content is "Durum Wheat." The bread flour is white, the durum is a pale yellow. So I do not think they are in any way the same. Just for comparison, the KAF AP flour bag says it, too, is 100% U.S. Hard Red Wheat, but the protein content is 11.7%. So the difference, at least for KAF, between AP and bread flour must be in the milling process?

Durum is yellow. Semolina is coarse, and usually, but not always durum. There is also fine durum flour. The red in hard red wheat is in the brown bran. The refined flour is white-ish, or pure white if bleached. Most US bread flour, AFIK, is hard red wheat, though it could be hard white, which has had the color (and some of the strong flavor) bred out of it. Cake flour is soft white wheat. AP is a combination of the two, usually with a little barley thrown in.

They can test for the protein content of the wheat crop, and most mills do adjust to a particular standard. KA is milled by ADM, so they have a lot of flour to choose from and can blend for their desired protein content.

General rule: If the protein content you're citing is a statement on the bag, you can trust it well enough. If you're trying to figure from the nutrition label, don't bother. A lot is lost in rounding error.

Here is a list of a lot of flours and their protein contents on The Fresh Loaf. Scroll down to Antilope's post:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/17045/protein-content-flour

Wow that was interesting! Thank you!