Different flour types in Japan

[cteavin]

Hi,

Any of you who live in Japan and have gone shopping for flour have seen the multitudinous types. I'm always lost. (I tend to chose Super King and Super Violet from Tomizawa-san.) For convenience I want to purchase flour in bulk, a 25kg bag for bread and the many multiply when you look online.

I like to support local agriculture whenever possible and after a lot of reading chose http://item.rakuten.co.jp/natural-coco/usuyume25/#usuyume25 for whole wheat. For white flour there are far more types and instead of reading through each one, I thought I'd ask if anyone has a favorite for bread, a company they like, any suggestions when choosing.

よろしくお願いします

[_john]

what kind of bread are you making?

[cteavin]

I like playing around. I have The Bread Bakers Apprentice and a few others. ATM I have a biga going for Pain de Mie for tomorrow.

Do you have any recommendations?

[_john]

I like a flour that is milled from french wheat by a Japanese company. The flour is called Terroir テロワール and you can get it in 25lb bags.

You can't go wrong with products from Nisshin Seifun. They have the cold milling technology and the transportation network necessary to make and deliver really good flour. If you could get local Japanese wheat raised in the proper conditions milled by Nisshin Seifun then it would be a great flour. Unfortunately as far as I know the proper conditions are not met fully anywhere in Japan. Hokkaido comes close but cannot compete with American wheat.

I remember the water quality not being the best for baking bread in Yokohama. See if you can find a bakery near you whose products you like and ask them if they use the tap water or something else.

[cteavin]

Thanks for the suggestion. It was just the kind of advice I was looking for.

The water here is really hard. I will ask my local baker.

Cheers,