Personally, I use whatever flour I have in the house. I have stocked mainly all-purpose flour. Here’s what I hope is the answer to your question. There are many other flours. Annie

Flour Differences

When it comes to the most common flours -- such as all-purpose flour, bread flour, cake flour, 00 flour, and self-rising flour.-- what's the difference?

Angella Kay notes, "Besides the price difference, the only other difference between bread flour and all purpose flour is that bread flour contains more gluten, which helps 'hold' the bread together."

Deluxe Bread & Dough Maker Book, which says, “In order for the bread to rise, the flour has to have a high protein content. You should always use a Bread Flour” (for white Bread recipes) in your bread maker to get the best results. Do not use all purpose, cake flour or self-rising flour.”

Cheri Sicard explains further, "Bread flour consists of 99.8 hard wheat flour, a small amount of malted barley flour, which improves yeast activity, and either vitamin C or potassium bromate, which increases the gluten's elasticity and the dough's gas retention." She also notes that retaining gas in yeast dough is a good thing -- it helps the dough rise.

So -- is bread flour worth the extra money?

I have been using a Bread Machine for over 6 years now, and at first I always used bread flour," says Brenda Hyde "Due to our shoestring budget, I started buying regular flour on sale, and noticed NO difference in my breads. Granted, they aren't the fancy recipes, but my pizza and bread stick dough, my sweet breads and even herb breads all turn out great with regular all-purpose flour rather than bread flour. So, if you are on a budget, I wouldn't worry about the difference."

Which brings us to another common flour you will find on your grocer's shelf: self-rising flour. This kind of flour has leavening (in the form of baking powder) and some salt already added to the mix.

If you needed to create a substitute for a recipe that calls for self-rising flour:

Use 1-cup all-purpose flour, 1-1/4 teaspoons of baking powder and a dash of salt.

Annie said, “You can substitute all-purpose flour in a recipe that calls for bread flour by adding a tablespoon of wheat gluten or so to your bread recipe to get essentially the same results as if you had used bread flour.” 

When using regular all-purpose flours and you need to substitute for cake flour: use 1-cup minus 2 tablespoons al-purpose flour for 1-cup cake flour.

What is Instant Flour? Q-Chef said:

Instant flour dissolves quickly in either hot or cold liquids, and is most often called for to thicken gravies and sauces. It is also sometimes used in making piecrusts and other recipes that call for cake flour. Two of the leading brands available in this country are Wondra and Shake & Blend.

What is 00 Flour, (pasta flour)?

In Italy, flour is classified either as 1, 0, or 00, and refers to how finely ground the flour is and how much of the bran and germ have been removed. Doppio zero is the most highly refined and therefore particularly suitable for making pasta

As Jeffrey Steingarten says cooks in the United States sometimes substitute a mix of low-protein cake flour and all-purpose flour for the 00 flour called for in a pasta recipe. But Marcella Hazan, says she finds that all-purpose flour does the "most consistently satisfying job" in standing in for the doppio zero.

What is cookie flour?

It’s pastry or cake flour, low-gluten, high-starch flour that produces tender, light baked goods.

What is the difference between bread flour and high-gluten flour? Can high-gluten be used in place of bread flour successfully? Q-chef said:

Bread flour is a high-gluten flour that has very small amounts of malted barley flour and vitamin C or potassium bromate added. The barley flour helps the yeast work, and the other additive increases the elasticity of the gluten and its ability to retain gas as the dough rises and bakes.

Flour sold as high-gluten or simply gluten flour has been treated to remove most of its starch, which leaves it with proportionately more of the proteins that produce gluten. It is generally used as an additive to doughs made of low-gluten flours, such as rye flour, to give them the elasticity that they can’t muster on their own.

Some people use high-gluten flour to make a low-calorie loaf of bread, but, because high-gluten flour is about eight times as expensive as bread flour, most people don’t make the substitution.

Don’t panic if you forgot to label your flour canisters? King Arthur’s flour said,

"Take the flours and carefully measure one cup of each into separate bowls. Add 1/4 cup of water to each bowl and blend. The stiffer dough is the bread flour. The next less-stiff dough is all-purpose flour. And pastry and cake flours make a soft paste, with the cake flour being a bleached white color."