Why does so-called "hard" bread flour make "softer" noodles than so-called soft AP flour?

Question

I switched the recipe from eggs, milk and AP flour to bread flour, soymilk and olive oil and got some very tender noodles...seems like there would be more gluten in bread flour and thus a more chewy noodle...they turned out good, but didn't seem to "fluff up" as much as the original recipe. What is the difference between semolina and bread flour if they are both "hard" flours?? ...Oh, and it WAS a lot harder to roll and cut the noodles with bread flour..

Lord..bromates in flour to kill weevils!!! can we eat anything now adays. When I was a kid (in the dinosaur age) we got weevils in flour ALOT ...I always wondered why I don't get them now that I have my own flour...

I checked the flour and it says King Arthur and unbleached and unbromated.

Answer 1

Semolina is made from Durum wheat which is a very hard flour (18% protein - gluten content) while bread flour is typically in the 11-13% range. Bread flour is milled from a mixture of wheat varieties - hard red wheat and hard white wheat, but Semolina is exclusively Duram wheat.

Semolina has a higher gluten content than bread flour, but Semolina, also, has a high cellulose content which keeps the pasta firm.

Also, bread flour has added bromates which increases the elasticity of the flour, which translate to a softer product.

PS... bromates are used a bleaching agent, not as an insecticide. Imagine the uproar that people would have over insecticides in our food. People would lose confidence in manufacturer's.

Glad to hear that King Arthur does not use bromates. That's a very good brand.

Answer 2

It looks to me like you got softer noodles because you veganized the recipe and not because of the flour. In the original recipe (for an egg noodle) the egg will boost the firmness of the cooked dough. In your modification you added olive oil which doesn't set and would also keep the gluten proteins from meshing, thus a softer end product.
The change in fluffiness could be explained by not having air bubbles trapped by the egg proteins (which would expand when heated), along with the softer set of egg protein vs. gluten.
When raw, the higher gluten content of the bread flour would explain why it was harder to roll and cut the noodles (as opposed to the lower gluten content AP flour noodles).
The switch in milks wouldn't make any real difference in the recipes. Next time replace the eggs with a quarter teaspoon of Xanthan gum whipped into a quarter cup water per egg called for and the result should be closer to the original recipe. The higher the gluten content of the flour you use, the more chewy to end noodles will be (roughly speaking).

I know it's controversial thing to say but don't worry to much about the bromides. They're used in flour not only as a bug killer but also as the agent to speed bleaching. Your body actually uses a little bromine and to get toxic effects you'd need to eat several hundred pounds of brominated flour a day (which would have more serious repercussions).

Edit:

Now that I'm awake just a little more about brominating agents and flour preservation. There are several methods of preventing infestation in flour. Bromine can be used for that but it's costlier than other methods and would have the 'drawback' of changing the nature of the flour. More common methods of stopping infestation would be irradiation, freezing or safe gasses like N2 or CO2 (I long term store dry food in CO2).

You'll only find brominating agents used speed the bleaching of flour (as opposed to the traditional method of letting the flour rest for a year).

Answer 3

This is a science itself
There is soft wheat and hard wheat
A/P flour is all purpose flour
There is Summer and Winter wheat
It is the protein in the flour
Use a high gluten flour-unbleached-All Trump is a good brand
Flour contains ash-will not harm you
Semolina if 100% is the best for making noodles-expensive but worth every penny
Bromates are added to kill bol wevils-flour germ