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I live in central New Jersey in the USA. We have a reasonable selection of retail flours and quite a few professional flours available to us. This is a short listing of and discussion about the flours I use and, in some cases, would like to use.
This flour is a little over 12% protein, so it's not a high-protein "super bread flour." It's been around for some time. I became aware of it in 2001 and have been using it since, even when I had to drive over an hour each way to buy it at Dawn Foods. It's been in retail stores since September 2006, and has replaced GM's bread flour, "Better for Bread." GM says that HK is specially formulated for artisanal breadmaking, although I don't see the difference when looking at the specification sheet. I find it's a really good flour for a lot of my bread baking and it's become one of my standards.
When I need a traditional high power bread flour that's available retail, this is the one. It gives great loft and volume to any bread it's used with. I use this quite a lot for regular breads when I mix in whole wheat, rye or rye meal, since those flours can cause loft problems.
A wonderful flour to add to white breads to give a bit of texture and color. I add this in small quantities to quite a few recipes, up to 15% without making any adjustments. One of my favorite modifications to a white recipe is to add this and whole wheat to a traditional recipe. This flour doesn't add the normal "rye" look or flavor, but it's a good flour to use in a lot of recipes.
I'm still trying to figure out how they do this, but no matter how they do it, it's really good flour. Combine 2 parts of this and one part of the rye, above, and you've got a good combination. It appears to have a really good protein level, maybe over 14%, so it overcomes a lot of the usual lower volume that whole wheat flours cause.
This is another puzzlement to me. This flour appears to have a super-high protein level, but I haven't been able to find out anything about it. If you have a WF near you, give this a try. They sell it in the bulk section for 69 cents a pound.
I tried a couple of bags of this flour and liked it, especially at $1.99 per bag. It seemed to be something between all purpose and bread flour, so I used it in several breads. If you have a Whole Foods near you, give it a try.
I started using this when I started making raisin pumpernickel and just kept on using it for a lot of things. It's another add-in for a lot of recipes, for both flavor and texture. I'm sure other companies sell this flour. It's pretty expensive, especially if you to mail-order it.
When I want something a little different in a white bread, I mix in the following with very little modification of the yeast or salt:
10-30% Whole Wheat Bread Flour
5-20% Stoneground Rye
5-20% Rye Meal
With a maximum of 40% of the total flour made up of these three.
GM says this is a "legend" in the baking industry. It probably is, but it's also next to impossible to find. I have to buy it from Dawns Foods or Country Foods in 50 pound bags. As a result, I don't use it much, unless I can find a friend or two to take some of it off my hands. This stuff is too powerful for most of my breads, but if I could get it easily, I'd be tempted to work it into my breads. GM says it's really good for pizza dough. It's the best super flour I have ever used. Strangely, it's offered in bleached in the East and unbleached in the West. Or at least that's the way it appears on the GM web site. As an aside, GM used to have a "Better for Bread" that was a traditional bread flour with a high protein level. They dropped that flour in favor of Harvest King. I'm hoping that GM replaces BFB with a retail packaged All Trumps.
There are a lot of flours available in my area from Bob's Red Mill and Arrowhead Mills. I'm sure they're good flours, but they're too expensive for me to use every day and they appear to sell too slowly for me to be confident of their freshness off the shelf.
I'd love to be able to find King Arthur Sir Lancelot and General Mills Iron Duke close by. KASL is supposed to be a really good high protein flour, and Iron Duke is a high-protein flour with a very high ash content. GM says it's used for carrying rye doughs, but I wonder if the higher ash content might make it good for longer fermentations.
As far as "organic" flours go, I've never seen an "inorganic" flour, but many people swear that either they can tell the difference or that they like the thought of putting something "unpoluted" into their body. To me, paying more for "organic" foods is like paying more for brown eggs versus white eggs: You pay your money and take your choice.
Now for a personal observation.
Some bakers believe that they need super protein bread flour to make any bread. They make French baguettes,
Italian, Ciabatta, Focaccia, etc., all with the highest protein flour they can find.
I think the use of high protein flour may be partially linked to the desire for large holes no matter what.
This is interesting, because from everything I can find out, the European breads they are trying to replicate are all made
with flours that are frequently little better than our All Purpose, and certainly nowhere close to our super bread flours.
How do the Europeans make such great bread?
Technique. Time. Attention to detail.
Instead of automatically reaching for the high-protein bread flour, try using something a little lower down the scale
and taking the time to develop the dough.