11 Varieties of Wheat Flour and Their Applications

All-purpose flour is the essential tool for pastry chefs. With it, you can create everything from cake batter to roux, pizza dough, or even paper mache masks (though do not eat the mask). This flour is so common that many recipes don’t even mention it by name, simply calling it “flour.” With a moderate gluten content (10-12%), all-purpose flour has just enough elasticity to make a good lean bread.

Available in both bleached and unbleached forms, bleached all-purpose flour is bright white, with a finer, clumpier texture, and a slightly altered flavor. Unbleached flour, such as the brand Heckers, has a creamier color and a looser texture, as it hasn’t undergone the bleaching process.

When handled gently and combined with enough fat, all-purpose flour can produce a tender cake or a crumbly cookie. If a recipe in the U.S. simply lists “flour,” it’s referring to all-purpose. In a pinch, you can substitute this flour for others, but keep in mind that it might change the texture of your baked goods.

If you're looking for a tender, flaky pastry, pastry flour is your go-to. With a lower gluten content (8-10%), it’s milled much finer than all-purpose flour, yielding a softer, less chewy texture with a finer crumb. This minimal amount of gluten gives your pastry just enough structure for a crispy, flaky pie crust or a soft sponge cake. Since finely milled flours can clump, it’s helpful to sift the flour before mixing it with wet ingredients.

Cake flour is almost identical to pastry flour, with one minor difference—gluten content. Cake flour has slightly less gluten (7-10%), but even this difference is hardly noticeable. Like pastry flour, cake flour is finely milled and comes in bleached or unbleached options. The difference between cake and pastry flour is minimal, with the gluten content only differing by about one percent (maybe).

The slight variations in gluten percentages depend on the wheat varieties and processing methods used by different producers. For instance, both King Arthur cake flour and Bob’s Red Mill all-purpose flour may have the same gluten content (around 10%).

While all-purpose flour is less finely milled, making the differences more noticeable, cake flour and pastry flour are so similar that even experienced pastry chefs might struggle to tell them apart in the final product. If you can’t find cake flour at the store, feel free to use pastry flour instead—they work interchangeably in most recipes.

Let’s leave the low-protein flours behind and get serious. Bread flour boasts a strong gluten content of 12-14%. It's made from a hard wheat variety and isn't subjected to an ultra-fine milling process. This higher protein content is perfect for bread, forming a strong gluten network that traps air released by leavening agents, giving the bread its chewy texture. Trying to bake a chewy, lean bread like ciabatta or a baguette with low-gluten flour, such as all-purpose, will result in an inferior loaf. While it might make a decent sandwich, it won't have the same rise or chew as bread made with bread flour.

Not only lower-gluten flours undergo fine milling; Double zero flour is another example. Commonly used in Italy for making pizza and pasta, it features a high protein content and is finely milled. Its small particle structure allows the dough to absorb more water. When used in pizza dough, doppio zero flour creates a crust that can be stretched thin without losing its chewiness or turning into a cracker-like texture during baking. This could be one of the secrets behind why pizza tastes so incredible in Italy. While you might not find 00 flour in every grocery store, Italian specialty shops usually stock it, or you can order it online.

Let’s wrap up our talk about gluten with the most gluten-packed powder of all: vital wheat gluten. While it’s not typically discussed alongside other flours, vital wheat gluten is a powdered ingredient that can be mixed with other ingredients to create a flour with higher gluten content. It’s essentially pure wheat protein, processed to separate the gluten from the starch. Vital wheat gluten is the main component in seitan, a popular vegan meat substitute. It’s also a handy ingredient to have in your pantry for those times when you need to boost the gluten level in your flour for a specific recipe. (Remember that time when bread flour was nowhere to be found, but we still wanted to make sourdough?) Just grab some all-purpose flour and add a little vital wheat gluten, and you've got an effective bread flour.

Often found in recipes from Europe and North America, self-rising flour is a blend of all-purpose flour, baking powder, and salt—the key dry ingredients in many favorite recipes like biscuits, pancakes, cakes, and muffins. You can either purchase it pre-made or prepare your own. Although the proportions of flour to leavening agents in store-bought versions are commonly used, they might not always work perfectly for every recipe. For instance, a chocolate chip banana loaf needs more leavening power than a simple two-inch buttermilk biscuit. Always check the recipe instructions to see if self-rising flour can be used as a substitute or do a bit of math to ensure the proportions are correct.

Similar to all-purpose flour, white flour is created by milling the starchy endosperm of the wheat and separating it from the bran, germ, and other outer plant parts. The term “white flour” can refer to any flour processed in this way, irrespective of its protein content. The endosperm is the white part of the wheat, and once ground, it may undergo further bleaching, resulting in the white flour typically found in stores.

Whole wheat flour isn't as commonly available in various forms as white flour, partly due to the naturally occurring gluten in the wheat. It’s made from the whole wheat berry, including the endosperm, bran, and germ, which is why it has a distinctive color. The appeal of whole wheat flour lies in its minimal processing, which retains all parts of the wheat, making it higher in protein. However, there are whole wheat pastry flours that are made from softer varieties of wheat.

To substitute whole wheat flour in recipes calling for all-purpose flour, such as muffins or pancakes, use half whole wheat flour and half the original flour. Since whole wheat flour is usually milled coarsely, it doesn't trap air as well during leavening, so combining it with white flour will help retain the desired light texture while adding depth of flavor, color, and a heartier texture to your baked goods.

Sprouted flour refers to flour made from seeds that were allowed to germinate before being dried and ground into flour. The germination process is believed to enhance the nutritional content and make proteins more accessible for the body. Cook’s Illustrated conducted experiments comparing sprouted flour to whole wheat flour to observe any differences in their recipes. Read here to explore the results that sprouted up from these tests.

While most wheat flours come from the common wheat plant, durum flour is sourced from the durum wheat variety. Durum is a notably hard wheat, and as is typical with hard wheats, it produces high-gluten flour, which makes it ideal for making pasta and bread. The wheat grain is ground into a soft, golden flour, which we recognize as semolina, made from none other than durum wheat. Semolina can be milled into coarse grits or into a fine powder to create smooth, chewy pasta.