Prairie Gold White Wheat Flour

This is my great flour for making sourdough bread. It’s a slightly denser loaf than bread flour but still gives a nice rise and you can often find this flour at regular grocery stores as well as online.

Types of Flour to Feed Your Starter

I feed my starter this Premium Natural White All-Purpose Flour. You can feed your starter whole wheat flour which contains many minerals but always look for high protein content in your flour. Ideally, your flour should have 11-13 % protein content to make the best bread with the highest rise. The flour we use has one of the highest protein unbleached white flour available. This flour has 13.33% protein content.

You can also use bread flour or a good quality unbleached white flour whole wheat flour, or rye which is wonderful too. You’ll need to use a flour that does not add chemicals or one that is bleached, otherwise, your starter might not get bubbly. Bread flour is what is most commonly used by bread makers because of the high protein count in the flour. A high protein count makes the bread rise higher. Whole wheat flour will make a more dense loaf that doesn’t rise as high.

White wheat flours work better and this Prairie Gold Wheat Montana is a good one to use if you want to use mostly wheat flour.

Don’t use sprouted flours to make sourdough bread. The process of sprouting breaks down the grain and then it doesn’t work as well for the sourdough culture.

How To calculate the percentage of protein in flour

If there are 4 grams of protein per 30 grams of flour, you need to multiply 4 by the number 100 and then divide by 30 (see example below).

4 g protein per 30 g flour
4 × 100 = 400
400 / 30 = 13.33

This flour has a protein content of 13.33%.

Use this formula to determine the percentage of protein in flour:
(x) grams of protein per (y) grams of flour
(x) x 100 = (z)
(z) / (y) = % of protein content in the flour