Saint Pizza wrote:I need some help with translating from Polish. Today I put together a sponge for rye bread to bake tomorrow, and to my surprise when I opened up a brand new bag of what I thought was rye flour, out poured white flour. Shouldn't it be brown? I got the package from Andy's Deli and it says "Maka Poznanska." Did I accidentally buy AP flour?
That means "Poznan Flour," Poznan being a city in Poland. I've always wondered about the differences between all the Polish flours, and here's
what I could dig up:
Flour type, according to Polish food regulations, means the content of ashes in it (i.e. the remains after complete burning of the organic ingredients in a sample of the product at a determined temperature). Ii is expressed in gramms/100 kg of flour. For example: type 500 means that in every 100 kg of flour there's around 500 g of ashes, and type 850 means that in every 100 kg the content of ashes is around 850 g.
Main types of wheat flours:
- mąka poznańska, typ 500 - recommended for dough for noodles, pierogi, pizza, for sauces (as densifier);
- mąka luksusowa, typ 550 - recommended for dough for yeast cakes and fried cakes;
- mąka tortowa, typ 450 - recommended for dough for sponge cake or sponge cake with fat;
- mąka krupczatka, typ 500 - recommended for shortcrust pastry and "półkruche" (shortcrust pastry with cream, egg whites and baking soda), "ciasto parzone" (steamed dough/pastry???) and maccaroni
- mąka wrocławska, typ 500 - recommended for dough for yeast cakes, puff pastry (ciasto francuskie) and rough-puff pastry (ciasto półfrancuskie), pancakes, soups and sauces
My folks and grandfolks just used regular AP flour for most Polish stuff growing up, so I am unfamiliary with their differences in use.