Flours for baking bread at home

In the Polish market we can more and more often buy rye and wheat flour for baking bread at home. The best idea is to make your own bread mixture with the above mentioned proportions (1/3 of rye flour, 2/3 of wheat flour). When you buy flour for bread, you should also pay attention to the type.

Rye bread flours are:
- type 2000 – very dark, coarse,
- type 1400 – dark, with medium texture,
- type 720 (750) - medium-dark, fine,
- type 580 – very light, fine.

Wheat bread flours are:
- type 1850 – graham, very dark and very coarse,
- type 850/750 - typical bread flour, very light and fine,
- type 500 – bun flour, very light and fine.

If you are making your own mixture, you should combine dark flours with dark flours and light flours with light flours. This matters also because dark flours are coarse, and light flours are fine. If you combine coarse flour with fine flour, your bread may be uneven and may crumble.
This means that you should combine:
• rye flour type 2000, 1400 with wheat flour type 1850.
• rye flour type 720 with wheat flour type 750, 850.
• rye flour type 580 with wheat flour type 500.

Use rye flour type 2000 to make sour soup.
Use wheat flour type 1850 to make white borscht.