Whats the difference between strong bread flour and strong flour

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I had bought some white bread flour, now used up and found in Lidl 'strong wholemeal flour'

Is this wholemeal bread flour and if not what is the difference. I noticed they also sold strong white flour.

Depends on how elastic the glutein of that flour is. You want to be forming more elastic glutein in your dough for bread because it will expand multiple times and trap the Co2 from yeast.

'Strong' means it's made from hard wheat that has a high protein content. That high protein content gives the final product structure and stability. The opposite would be 'soft' flour with a lower protein content. That would cause the final product to be more crumbly.

Whether that 'strong' flour is suitable for bread will depend on the wheat used. If it's Durum wheat it will be 'hard' and have a high protein content. That doesn't necessarily make it suitable for bread because that kind of wheat's gluten is more like clay and less elastic than that of 'bread flour'.

Thats helpful so really need to look for bread flour for bread making.

Im making this no knead bread and I noticed the dough is much drier and tighter than my others that Ive made and it hasnt got as big

Its cooling down now, the bloody thing stuck to the parchment, thats the second time thats happened and Im not sure why so we had to cut the bottom off and we'll try it soon.

I did 2 parts wholemeal and 1 part normal plain flour. I think for my next one Im going to do 1 part wholemeal and 2 parts white bread flour

Bread problems can be tricky to diagnose without pictures. You say that you got bad results, but did you use the exact same ingredients, tin size, oven setting, proving time as the other times? Even the humidity affects how much water your flour will need.

I can hazard a guess from the types of flour you are using. The bran in the wholemeal flour interferes with gluten formation. Bread made from wholemeal will not be as 'fluffy' as that made from white and naturally will be more dense. Doubly so for a no-knead recipe because it will take even longer for glutein to develop. Plain flour isn't necessarilly suitable for bread. It is more 'cakey' and crumbly. Your flour will push your dough towards being dense and stodgy. More like a fruitcake than a traditional spongy bread.

I didnt say I got bad results, I just noticed that the dough was not that sticky dough that the no knead doughs are meant to be, and how the others have also been previously and it didnt get as big although did rise.

Its a much smaller loaf than normal, we had to cut the bottom off to get rid of the paper. I love wholemeal bread (not really meant to eat bread if Im honest) and I think its unbelievable, but it looks very very different to the no knead breads I did before (which havent always been with bread flour, you can just do them with plain flour, the results are much the same).

So it hasnt got the big holes in it, its much more dense, like a shop bought loaf really or bakery loaf. That was with 18 hours in the bowl.

Im having some later with butter and honey, hope it doesnt make me ill