Hard winter wheat (HWW) is the predominant wheat of choice for bread production, but I’m finding that not all varieties create dough with optimum handling properties. From my internship with Flower’s Foods in a commercial bakery, I learned firsthand how important consistent flour quality is between lot changeovers, and that even flours that meet tight specifications don’t always perform the same way.
Since commercial production line equipment is designed to produce large volumes of product at a rapid production rate, there’s no time allowance for process modification. Often, the product simply cannot be salvaged once it moves outside of desired parameters for the processing line (it’s too weak or too strong, for example), which can result in lots of lost time and product.