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Homemade Bread Flour – When you’re out of bread flour you can make your own substitute with just 2 ingredients and following a no-fail formula!
I live and die by Bread Flour. I easily have 100lbs of it on hand at any given moment. I know it sounds like a lot but I do a TON of baking for home and commercial use so it makes sense.
I love bread. No, really. I LOVE bread. I swear there is nothing better than a warm slice of freshly baked bread with butter and homemade preserves on it. This many-a-night has been dinner for me.
Ingredients needed to make homemade bread flour
It’s just 2 ingredients:
- American All-Purpose Flour
- Vital Wheat Gluten
That’s it! Nowadays most grocery stores carry the vital wheat gluten but if not, Amazon sells it.
As I mentioned this is for American All-Purpose flour as Canadian all-purpose flour is already had a high protein percentage similar to our bread flour.
What is Vital Wheat Gluten?
It’s the natural protein found in wheat. It’s found in the endosperm of the wheat berry. This, alone, contains 75-80% of the protein. What protein does in the dough helps with the elasticity of it, the rise (it’ll help it retain gas), and gives it more volume. Plus it helps give that ‘chew’ we love in say a crusty bread.
As you can tell on here I have a bunch of bread recipes that call for bread flour. Well, not every home cook has bread flour on hand. Just like cake flour and self rising flour, you buy it specifically for a single recipe and then it sits. Why? To me, that’s wasting money ESPECIALLY when you can make it yourself using All-Purpose flour.
Not all American All-Purpose Flour is the same
Depending on what brand of AP flour you buy, the protein in it can vary from brand to brand. The percentage can range from 9-12%. Bread flour is anywhere from 11-14/15%
You REALLY need to check the bag of flour you buy as you’ll need to know the protein percentage of your flour in order to know how much vital wheat gluten to add!
I need to give a HUGE thanks to Robin who gave me one of the BEST formulas to help calculate how must Vital Wheat Gluten to add to your all-purpose flour.
Protein Percentage – what it is and what it is not
As I just mentioned, not all flour protein percentages are the same.
What it is NOT
The Protein Percentage is NOT the nutritional protein on the back of the flour bag (where you see calories and so forth). That is completely different.
What it IS
Normally the flour bag itself will say what protein percentage it is. For example, King Arthur All-Purpose Flour says on the bag that it is 11.7% protein content. THAT is the number you need for your formula.
If your brand of flour does not list it on the bag then contact the manufacturer or look on Google. Since there are hundreds of brands out there I cannot tell you your %. Keep in mind though, the average protein content is 9% for all purpose flour.
Bread Flour Formula
You have to use math but this will ensure you’re adding the right amount of vital wheat gluten to make your own bread flour.
(Average Bread Flour Protein – AP Flour protein) * 1% (recipe flour amount in grams) = Amount of Vital Wheat Gluten to add
Bread flour can vary in protein however a good one is 12% protein.
- Look at your bread recipe and, calculate in grams how much flour your recipe calls for.
- My Hoagie Roll recipe calls for 448 grams of bread flour and the protein count (per the bag is 12%)
- AP Flour average is 9% protein
- Using the above formula, if I only had AP flour on hand I would use the following vital wheat gluten to add to my recipe
- (12-9) *4.48 = 13.44 grams of Vital Wheat Gluten or 1 tablespoon plus 2.75 teaspoon
Making Bread Flour in Bulk
Many of you have asked if you can use this formula to transform a 5 pound or larger back of all-purpose flour into bread flour.
I do not recommend it and here’s why.
This formula is to use in a single recipe where it’s to make 1-2 loaves of bread, not for bulk processing or batch making. Scaling a recipe is not as simple as doubling the ingredients or timesing them by 10. It doesn’t that work that way. There are other calculations and factors that come into play.
Some know it as “Bakers Percentages”. That is not something I or this formula addresses.
PrintHow to make Bread Flour
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Total Time: 5 minutes
- Yield: What your recipe calls for
- Category: Baking
- Method: mixing
- Cuisine: baking
Homemade Bread Flour – When you’re out of bread flour you can make your own substitute with just 2 ingredients and following a no-fail formula!
Ingredients
- Your bread recipe
- American All Purpose Flour – you must know the protein percentage amount of it (look at your bag of flour)
- Vital Wheat Gluten
Instructions
- Calculate the flour needed in your bread recipe to grams.
- Look at the bag of AP flour and see what the protein % is.
- Use THIS formula to calculate how much vital wheat gluten you need:
- (Average Bread Flour Protein – AP Flour protein) * 1% (recipe flour amount in grams) = Amount of Vital Wheat Gluten to add
Keywords: bread flour, vital wheat gluten, how to make bread flour, turning US AP flour into bread flour
Tough, huh? *wink*
This worked perfectly! So easy TKW; thank you!!! When the pandemic hit, bread flour was (and still is) impossible to find but I was able to get my hands on a large bag of all-purpose flour and the VWG.
Just a little bit was all I needed using this formula and my bread turned out perfect! So chewy and, I think, better than any store-bought!
Thank you so SO MUCH!!!
★★★★★
Hi Kaliegh!
Yeah!!! So happy this worked out for you and it made you the bread baking rock star!!!
Best Kitchen Wishes!
If my recipe calls for 600 grams bread flour (usually KAF AT 12.7%) and my KAF AP Flour is 11.7% is this correct:
12.7 – 11.7 = 1 x 6.0 = 6 grams of Vital wheat so if my vital wheat gluten is 30 grams to a 1/4 cup how much do I need to add?
If I wanted to take a 5 pound bg of KAF AP flour and add enough vital wheat gluten to equal a 5 pound bag of KAF Bread Flour how much would I need to add?
Sorry for my lack of math brain.
Hi!
Your latter part of 30 grams to a 1/4 cup doesn’t make sense. It’s not part of the formula. If your recipe calls for 600 grams of bread flour, you’re correct in the first part of your calculation:
(12.7-11.7) *6= 6 grams of VWG that is added in addition to the rest of your ingredients. That’s it. So to your bread recipe, you’d add the 600 grams of AP flour (in lieu of bread flour) and also add 6 grams of VWG.
As for doing in bulk processing, I’ve added a section to the post as many have asked about this. No, this formula is not meant to transpose more than a single recipe at a time (that is for 1-2 loaves of bread, not commercial type use). Scaling a recipe is not as simple as doubling or X-timesing the ingredients. It doesn’t that work that way in baking. It’s purely scientific.
Best Kitchen Wishes!
Thank you so much for this formula! The only flour I have been able to find recently is a 50 pound bag of Ardent Mills all-purpose flour at Costco. There is no protein percentage listed on the bag, but the website states the protein in 9.0 – 13.0%. What percentage would you recommend using for the calculation? I am glad to know I will be able to use this flour until I can find my regular brand again!
Hi Amy,
Average is about 9% so I would go with that for US AP flour. 13% would be something I would expect for find say in Canada as their AP flours are much higher in protein than US.
Best Kitchen Wishes!
Using your formula, I would measure 448 g of The AP flour I have on hand, then remove 13.5 g and replace that with the gluten flour?
Hi Kevin,
No, that is not correct. If your recipe calls for 448grams of bread flour you would need to take the protein percentage of bread flour minus the protein percentage of your AP flour times 4.48. Whatever that end result is, is how much VWG gluten you need to add to your AP flour.
Best Kitchen Wishes!
What temperature do you bake the Hoagie Bread at and for how long do you bake it??
★★★
It’s all listed on the hoagie roll recipe.
https://www.thekitchenwhisperer.net/2012/07/02/super-soft-n-chewy-hoagie-rolls/
Love the recipe . Can you add too much gluten and what happens then
It’ll turn out like a rock and be super hard and dense.
Best Kitchen Wishes!
Hi. I’m not good in the math conversions and I’m wondering if you can help me. The protein content in the AP flour is 10.5%. According to the recipe I’m doing, it states 3 cups of ‘bread flour.’ Can you help me with the VWG? Thanks so much.
Hi Jessi!
Sure no problem.
The formula is:
(Average Bread Flour Protein – AP Flour protein) * 1% (recipe flour amount in grams) = Amount of Vital Wheat Gluten to add
3 cups of bread flour = 381 grams
(12 (avg bread flour protein) – 10.5)*3.8 (this is 1% of you bread flour recipe in grams) = 5.72 grams of VWG which is approximately 1.15 tsp of VWG
Best Kitchen Wishes!
Thank you very much, I appreciate it! I am embarrassed I can’t do the math, like normal people can. Actually this is my first time baking from scratch. 😁. Thanks again,
No need to ever be embarrassed. I can’t wait to hear how it turns out!
Best Kitchen Wishes!
Thanks for posting this! One clarification question: let’s say I’m running this calculation against 500g of AP 9% protein flour, shooting for a protein content of 12%. This gives me 15g of VWG – do I add that to the 500g, or do I have adjust the amount of flour so that the total of AP flour + VWG is 500g?
You’re most welcome Karin! No, you would not adjust the flour measurement once you’ve calculated it out. Because the amount of VWG isn’t that significant you don’t have to re-measure the flour. Now if you were doing high-volume baking with say a 25 pound bag of flour to swap over then yes, you would re-measure.
Best Kitchen Wishes!
Makes sense. Thanks!
That’s really helpful, thank you as I had the same question. Used it to make pizza dough and the result is fantastic
★★★★★
Yeah! So happy it turned out perfectly for you!
Best Kitchen Wishes!
Hello. Thanks for the tip. Do you have a recipe for the bread you have pictured at the beginning of this blog? It looks absolutely delicious
The blog as a whole or the image on this post?
If it’s the image in this post, just search in my blog for Baguette and you’ll find the recipe.
Best Kitchen Wishes!
Thanks for this!! I’m guessing if I need AP flour and all I have on hand are cake flour and vital wheat gluten, I can do a similar calculation to make a substitution, aiming for 9% protein content in the final product. Does that sound plausible?
No; to my knowledge this only works with AP flour. I’ve not tried it on cake flour. Plus cake flour has cornstarch added to it as well if memory serves me correct. At least it does when you make homemade
No, you want your bread flour to be at least 12% protein content.
Plus cake flour is milled differently than ap flour. Meaning the volume of 11 ounces of AP flour in cups would be a little over 2 1/4 cups but that same weight in cake flour would be closer to 2 3/4 cups.
I personally don’t recommend using cake flour in this formula.
Best Kitchen Wishes!