All About All-Purpose Flour

ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR IS a kitchen staple, and we use it in a variety of ways, from baking breads, cakes, cookies, and biscuits to making roux, sauces, and pastas to coating fried foods. But despite the all-encompassing name, not all all-purpose flours are the same. In the test kitchen, we stock two all-purpose flours—one higher-protein flour and one moderate-protein flour—and employ each strategically, as we’ve found that they perform differently.

To find out what causes these performance differences, we rounded up five top-selling