There are many different types of flour, which itself causes some headaches for beginner bread makers like me. To make things even more challenging, most countries have their own systems for categorising flour, and the typical flour types are not the same across countries. This may cause trouble not only with online recipes but also when using the recipe book that came with your bread maker. Using the wrong type of flour means that the dough may become too wet or too dry, which can lead to bread that is too dense, collapsed or dry. Similarly, you need to watch out for units: an American "cup" is a volume unit that has different conversion rates to weight, such as grams. The conversion rates depend on both the type of flour and how densely the flour settles when being measured.
I made some research online and found that there are different conversions between the flour types of different countries. I also read about the so-called ash-content, extraction rate, mineral content and protein content, all of which make any conversion quite difficult.
It is not easy to navigate between conflicting conversions, so I decided to create my own conversion table that I will use in the future. I'm happy to share it with you. I hope it will help you when dealing with recipes from different sources (American websites, European recipes, etc). This table may not be perfect since there are often no clear equivalents for different types of flour. Use this as a guide to find the best approximation you have access to and keep an eye on the dough structure during the kneading process: if the dough is too wet and sticky after 10-15 minutes of kneading, add some extra flour; and if the dough is too dry, add some extra liquid like water or milk. Please also keep in mind that all this information applies only to wheat flour and comes from different (conflicting) websites, so I had to make certain choices. See the references at the end of this post if you want to make your own judgement.
Similar wheat flour types across countries
| French | Italian | German | American |
|---|---|---|---|
| - | 00 | 405 | - |
| T45 | - | 450 | cake & pastry |
| T55 | 0 | 550 | all purpose & bread |
| T65 | 1 | 812 | high-gluten bread |
| T80 | 2 | 1050 | half whole-wheat |
| T110 | integrale | 1200 | whole-wheat |
| T150 | - | 1700 | dark whole-wheat |
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