In danger of sounding,well,for lack of a better word,dumb. I would like to know if High Gluten Flour and Enriched Flour are the same thing. I would appreciate it if anyone can shed some light on this question for me.
To Quote Tom the dough doctor.
There seems to be a little confusion. Straight grade, and patent grade flours are not enriched in gluten/protein content in any way. When a flour indicates that it is enriched, this means that it has had a vitamin and mineral supplement added to the flour to give the flour the same nutritional value (minus the fiber content) of thar flour presented as a whole-wheat flour, said another way, an enriched white flour has essentially the same nutritional value as a whole-wheat flour.
The “W” that you reference is a value from the Alveograph, representing the deformation of energy of the dough. This is all well and fine for soft wheat flours and weak protein flours, but it really isn’t very effective for measuring/determining characteristics of the gluten forming proteins of the U.S. and Canadian hard wheat flours. This is where the Farinograph or the Glutomatic for wet/dry gluten weight come into play.
As far as treatment of the flour goes, you can opt for treated flour, or untreated flour, the same for enriched or non-enriched, but some states will require that all flour used in food manufacturing be sold as enriched flour, so un-enriched flour may not be available everywhere.
I hope this helps.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
Thank you for your reply Daddio,it has been very helpful. 