Not sure about you, but during the lockdown I did find myself wanting to bake cookies but only having bread flour at home. No all purpose flour, I wondered if I can make the cookies work with bread flour. What to do?! Having done a little research, I found that it’s possible – but you need to find the right measurements. And this is also a good way to use up bread flour if you don’t fancy making bread.
What’s the difference between all-purpose flour and bread flour?
I hear you asking.
All-purpose flour is a white flour: the wheat grains have been stripped off their bran and germ during processing and grinding, leaving just the starchy endosperm. This has got a protein content of 9-11% as a standard. This has got to do with how the flour reacts when meeting with water, as well as how much gluten will form and how structured your bake will be. For cakes and bakes you want less structure, more softness and fluffiness So bread flour has got a protein content of 11-13% as a standard, which helps it to be more structured and chewy, overall a different thing.
So this means you can actually use bread flour for cookie. However, you need to treat it a little differently. My cookies worked out perfectly: chewy in the middle and soft around, just as they should. Bread flour actually helps them to get the right chewiness, me thinks!
See the recipe below for the correct measurements.
Top tip:
Make sure you take the cookies out of the oven when they look around 70% baked. Otherwise they might come out too hard.

Bread Flour Cookies. If you find yourself without all purpose flour but you also want cookies and have bread flour at home: here's how to use it.
- 220 g bread flour
- 110 g butter or margarine room temperature
- 125 g soft brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1/2 tsp soda bicarbonate
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 80-100 g choc chips or chopped dark chocolate
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Mix all ingredients together together with your hands and place the dough into the fridge for 30 minutes or an hour. Even overnight if you wish so, but minimum of half and hour.
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Preheat oven to 170 Celsius. Line a baking sheet with baking paper and spoon using a tablespoon, make little, just a little balls with your hands and place them on the baking sheet leaving some space between them. (A little smaller than a golf ball.) Then flatten them with your finger or a back of a fork.
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Bake them for about 10 minutes. They should be a little soft when coming out as they will harden a bit more during cooling down.
Enjoy.
Comments
These look great. Will bear it in mind if I run out of standard flour.
…okay??? AWKWARD
Oh these look yummy – and a timely recipe for me as I have just bulk bought some bread flour on Amazon (16KG!) as I got a breadmaker for my birthday! <3 I have pinned it to my foodie food pinterest board for future reference <3