West Indian bread

There are two other much older methods of making bread that rely on mechanical dough development. One is exhibition bread the other is West Indian bread. 

West Indian bread making, in contrast, was presumably developed to cope with high ambient temperatures when mechanical refrigeration was not available. Attempts to use the sort of bulk fermentation used in the UK would cause problems because of the high dough temperature. 

One property of the flour that is controlled by the miller is the extraction rate. Wholemeal flour has a 100% extraction rate, with brown, white and patent white having progressively reduced extraction rates. One obvious difference is the colour. Another is that the quality of the protein increase towards the middle of the wheat berry from which patent flour is produced. Thus, patent flour is sometimes used not to produce whiter bread but in products like hlo pastry or West Indian patties where the strength that patent flour gives is important and the colour is irrelevant. 

Patent flour has two classes of use. It can be used to make whiter bread or where very high protein content is required. The use of patent flour to make bread seems to be dying out. Its use does, however, remain popular in South Wales. There are various examples of products where patent flour is used for its protein quality, e.g. filo pastry and West Indian patties. Both of these products are brown so the colour of the flour is not important. 

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