I haven’t spoken much about retirement lately. For me, it is a sensitive topic right now with so many out of work. I feel for all those who have been fighting to make ends meet. While we are not living in luxury down here on a minimal fixed income, we absolutely have enough to eat and a roof over our heads. Some others are not so lucky. The closures from the pandemic have hit our little town hard like many others in México. Burglaries are on the rise and the food bank is overwhelmed with need right now as people figure out how to feed their families. Switch and I have donated as much as we can and are going to try and do a recurring donation to help out as much as possible.

Even if traditional currency is harder to come by right now, time is also money and I have an abundance of it. Without a structured work day, I can organize my day any way I want (seriously didn’t know how amazing this would be). For me, this has been manifesting as more time to perfect some skills and do some experimentation as well as more long term projects. I’ll save the music practice and rock path building for another post. Today, I want to show you a little cooking experiment that I did a couple weeks ago.

If you ask most cooks about the local wheat flour you can get down here, they’re usually pretty dismissive. Sure, it is very easy to find, but the prevailing opinion is that it sucks. “Selecta” is sold in 500g bags at pretty much any grocery store. I wasn’t a big fan of it – my neighbor jokes that it is at least 30% weevils – but wanted to do an experiment since we’d been spending a lot of money on whatever imported US flour we could find at the gringo groceries in Cabo. I wanted to make sure the money was indeed worth it. So I decided to make the same bread recipe side by side to see what the differences were.

A note about the bread recipe – it is the overnight white bread with Poolish (a preferment) from Ken’s Artisan in Portland. This bread is a great sandwich/all-purpose bread that I’ve been digging lately and would be a good candidate to evaluate the differences. I made this same recipe with a high gluten King Arthur Flour and Selecta side-by-side to see if I could notice a difference in quality. Techncally, the King Arthur Flour already has a leg up because it is high gluten, but that is what I had so here goes!

Selecta vs. King Arthur Bread Flour (KAF)

Raw flour before mixing:

• Color – Selecta a bit more yellow. KAF unbleached but more bright white.
• Smell – Distinct smell of bleach from the Selecta. Switch says KAF smells like nothing, I think it smells a bit nutty.

Poolish (Preferment):

Here, I mixed a small amount of yeast with 500g flour and 500g water and left overnight to form a poolish.

• Selecta (right): Lots of bubbles but flat. Streaks of alcohol on the top, definitely more brown in color, smells a lot of alcohol and also chlorine and/or dust. Smaller volume.
• KAF (left): bubbles thicker, volume bigger smells yeasty and slightly like alcohol, more fruity and nutty. Larger volume.

After mixing final dough:

• KAF: Very gloopy/rubbery texture, sticks to my hands, but wants to stick to itself more, so easy to scrape off. Slightly smaller volume after mixing than the Selecta.
• Selecta: Pasty texture and very sticky. Not easy at all to get off hands. Ended up having to wash the remainder off. Slightly larger volume after mixing.

Folding before the rise:

First and second folds: dramatic difference in elasticity between KAF (left) and Selecta (right). Selecta still elastic, but breaks easier and doesn’t pull the rest with it as much as the KAF. Selecta distinctly larger volume and more mounded after folding. 

Third fold: Selecta much less sticky. Bubbles don’t stay intact as much as the KAF (when stretching, more stretched/broken craters from bubbles). After third fold, volume of Selecta is still bigger and more mounded than KAF.

The rise:

Selecta still has more volume. I suspect this is because the bubbles produced don’t have to fight as hard to expand due to the reduced elasticity. Note: The KAH dough needed another hour of rise to reach the same volume as the Selecta. This was very convenient for baking!

After baking:

Both loaves look great, but the KAH loaf is noticeably bigger volume now. I can tell it is more airy and less dense because it feels lighter for the volume. Selecta crust is slightly darker. Both smell good and no more bleach/chlorine odor from the Selecta.

Crumb and Taste:

You can tell the Selecta loaves are shorter and more dense, but not by a ton. The KAH crumb is smoother, bubbles have more volume and they are a more consistent size throughout. The KAH bread itself seems a bit more moist. Selecta held its own, though. It doesn’t have quite as good flavor, but the texture works, crust is crispy and it functions as a good slice of bread. So, good in a pinch.

Outcome:

High-gluten bread flour is definitely preferable, but may not be worth the extra money from the gringo grocery. Luckily, I won’t have to worry about that for a while because coincidentally, we found some high gluten bread flour at the restaurant supply store (Villa Hermanos) in Cabo. 50lbs for 344 pesos (about $15!) – cheaper than Selecta and makes a great loaf. Woo!