Bleached vs Unbleached Flour
What’s the difference and which should you be baking with?
When shopping for flour, many of us grab the bleached bag without a second thought. It’s what our mother always bought. It’s bright white. It’s what we’re used to working with.
But, if you paused for just a moment, you would notice a small section of unbleached flour on the same shelves.
Which makes you wonder, have you been buying the wrong flour all your life?
Why is flour bleached?
As you may have guessed, bleaching is the process of turning flour that intense white color. Similar to what bleach does to your clothes.
Naturally, flour has yellow tinted molecules called carotenoids, which give a slightly cream color to the crop. Carotenoids are the same pigment molecules found in bright orange carrots.
Historically, consumers didn’t like this yellow colored flour. They preferred the perfectly white kind. Luckily, over many months of storage, flour will turn from yellow to white as it’s exposed to oxygen in the air.
The only problem is, flour millers don’t want to hold onto their product for several months or even up to a year. It’s expensive and requires a lot of space.
