What's In A Name? Flour Does Not Smell As Sweet

At some point, we've all discovered that the same food can have different names.  The name for soda (or pop or tonic or soft drinks or...) is a big one in the US, and everybody thinks that everybody else's regional dialect has a silly name.  I personally believe that calling all sodas "Coke" is just plain ridiculous.  This snippet of a real conversation I heard in a diner illustrates my point:

"I'd like a Coke."
"Sure, what kind?"
"A 7-Up."

What?!

It's not just soda, of course.  A milkshake in New England is (or used to be) a blend of milk and flavored syrup and not a blend of milk and ice cream.  That is a frappe - except in Rhode Island, where it's a cabinet.  I learned about frappes ten years ago, which is also when I figured out what the name "frappuccino" was supposed to mean: frappe + cappuccino.  Nobody has explained why a coffee chain that's from Seattle is naming things using a strictly New England regional name.

There's also regional brand name differences, such as Edy's/Dreyer's, Best Foods/Hellmann's, and Arnold/Oroweat.  Then there's differences in names between countries that supposedly speak the same language.  In the UK, cilantro is called coriander and zucchinis are courgettes.  We have also borrowed a lot of words in English and have ended up changing the meanings: in Italy, peperoni are bell peppers and salame piccante means pepperoni (the American version).

But some food name differences are important and really don't mean the same thing.  Take the word "flour": in the US, flour generally means wheat flour and any other type of flour is called "plant flour" to indicate what plant it was made from.  However, there are many different types of wheat flour and you shouldn't use a different type unless you know how to adapt a recipe for substitution.

The key difference between wheat flours is the amount of gluten.  Gluten is a protein that is found in wheat and other relatives, such as rye and barley.  It helps dough to rise and keep its shape and makes the dough elastic, which is why bread is chewy.  In general, savory dough recipes use flours with more gluten and sweet dough recipes use flours with less gluten.

There are six classes of wheat in the US (durum, hard red spring, hard red winter, soft red winter, hard white, soft white), and the types of flour they produce are different.  Not surprisingly, the hard wheat types are best for yeast breads and the soft types are best for pastries.  Durum is the hardest type of all, and is used to make pasta.

This is what your bread started out as.