What is strong white bread flour called in France?

[MarianForrester]

And can you buy it in supermarkets?

Need it for bread and pizza!

Hope someone can help

The French for Wheat flour is 'Farine de ble'.
It is usually sold as 'Farine Pain Blanc'.
You can certainly buy it in supermarkets. I buy mine in 5kg bags from the baking section of Carrefour supermarket.

That's brilliant, thank you.

And there's a big Carrefour near us, so will be all set.

I know it seems stupid but couldn't find the translation anywhere.

Glad to be of help!
They sell it in smaller bags too and you'll also find dried yeast and other products that you might need in the same section.

French bread flour, the equivalence of Strong White Flour with the gluten strength for making bread, is called T55 (grade reference) or Farine Blanche.

Thank you. I shall feel more confident now that am buying right thing

Depending on where you are, you can buy it much more cheaply from a local mill. Stoneground, however, is very very hard to find - think about 40km away for us, and we're in a rural area.

Had another thought - many of the Francine ones are not just flour, but mixes for bread machines and already have yeast added. You might have to read the labels.

For pizza have found the dough works quite well using cheapo plain flour from Lidl/Aldi at about ?1/kg.

O, that's interesting tb, my recipe is half strong, half normal flour, but will pop to Lidl and try that. Pizzas will be bargainous

I did notice a lot of mixes in the supermarket. I just assumed it would be easy to find an equivalent- not so.

T55 is not strong flour - it is the equivalent of ordinary plain flour. I have used T65 for bread. Do you have a Naturalia near you? They were very helpful and explained to me all of the various types of flour and what they were and weren't for. You can, of course, use T55 for bread, but it does come out quite "cakey".

I use pasta flour for pizzas, which is far cheaper in France than in the UK!

It's called "whywouldyoumakeyourownbreadwhentheboulangeristheexpert?"

For pizza you may want to also consider Italian 'Tipo 00' flour. I just bought some '00' flour to experiment with as UK flour doesnt seem to give the right consistency of dough for pizza.

I tried mixing blending UK strong white flour and plain white flour but it still didnt work well.

MoreBeta, that is what I said! It does work very well. Lovely light bases.

ChopstheDuck - x posted with you.

Glad to see it works. I haven't actually had a go with '00' flour yet. My family like home made pizza but sometimes thay say normal UK flour makes them quite heavy.

As an aside, I dont eat flour at all as I am gluten intolerant but my strong feeling is that bread in Continental Europe is really a very different and much lighter product because European flour is very different from our UK flour.

Indeed, my wife says she always feels fine after eating European bread on holiday and can barely eat UK bread as it give sher indigestion and IBS type symptoms. I make quite a lot of bread by hand now and am experimenting with a variety of flours and did a spelt bread which is lower gluten and my wife says she can eat that quite happily.

that's rather interesting because my mum suffers with IBS, and struggles with bread. I shall have to try her on some lighter bread and see if it helps!

The "Farine Fluide" that you get in Framce is, I think, supposed to be lower in gluten than regular flour. But I think it would make crapola bread.

I always use '00' flour for pizza bases

chops as an aside, bread made with spelt flour often is better, or 'less bad, for people who have a problem with normal wheatflour. Spelt is the indigenous wheat in the UK, so our guts are much more used to it.

Re - pizzas, dh has been glued to the takeaway recipe book, and they say when making pizza, to put tomato sauce, then cheese, then topping - ie peppers, prawns on top of the cheese to make the pizza less soggy. That might be worth a try, too.

Flour 55 is NOT as strong as the STRONG bread flour sold in England but this won't be a problem if you just give it longer to rise. You DONT need strong flour to make good bread. You just need to start earlier in the day - after all, you don't have to stand there watching it rise! If you use the stuff adulterated with Canadian strong flour you are asking for gluten trouble. I use normal plain flour for all bread and dough - and oddly, the only thing for which I use the Canada stuff is puff pastry.

I actually blind cook my bases for a few minutes, it makes them easier to top and transfer to the oven later, and they stay crispy. Red pesto is also a nice alternative to tomato sauce for the base.

Well, I got the cheapest T55 flour in the Super U, 67 cents a kilo. Success! Thanks, all

Btw, my tip for crispy pizza is to heat the oven as hot as you can; roll bases very thin; don't overload with topping; and cook for about 8 minutes.

I am also going to try making bread without strong flour as per the tip- usually have plenty time for it to prove. Plus it is warm here. In Scotland I usually need to put dough in the oven (switched off, obv) to rise.