What makes different brands of flours different?

[AllieK]

OK, been making the pie crust and pancakes with HEB unbleached all-purpose flour for a long time. HEB was out of it last week, so I bought Gold Medal unbleached all-purpose flour. My pie crust is dry and crumbly now and the pancakes are much dryer. So what is the difference in the different brands of flour?

[muzette7]

I mostly use Bobs red mill white whole wheat, no one ever notices the difference in baked goods. Just last week I picked up Jovial brand that is imported from Italy. Its pricey but they dont use round up on their crops, not that Bobs Red Mill does but it still has cross contamination. I never used Gold Medal brand, but you do notice a difference in the way things bake with different brands.

[Sabine]

I Dont bake pie crust or make pancakes, so I have no clue why the end product would come out differently
I would think all the different brand name of flour would have the same ingredients. ?

[Sabine]

AllieK, since shop HEB, I ask you, have you noticed that HEB has some empty shelves again ? and it's not paper goods either. The other day I noticed that they had no sugar, none at all and I am talking the 5 pound bags or larger, even the small 2 pound size. Which is what I buy, since I don't bake and we don't use much sugar.
So I went to Walmart ( which I don't like ) but the store is basically right next door to HEB and the shelves with sugar and flour were stocked. Very strange.

[AllieK]

AllieK, since shop HEB, I ask you, have you noticed that HEB has some empty shelves again ? and it's not paper goods either. The other day I noticed that they had no sugar, none at all and I am talking the 5 pound bags or larger, even the small 2 pound size. Which is what I buy, since I don't bake and we don't use much sugar.
So I went to Walmart ( which I don't like ) but the store is basically right next door to HEB and the shelves with sugar and flour were stocked. Very strange.

My HEB is very small, but I have noticed that the shelves are kind of bare a lot oftener. They have stopped carrying so many things I use and I think I've noticed that they are pushing their own products more now. Fancy Feast canned cat food is usually out, but the Hill County Fare and the HEB brand are always plentiful. I'm wondering if corporate is tellign them to sell more of their own products so they purposely don't stock the other brands of things?

[Sabine]

Yes, HEB is pushing their own brand for sure.
I also noticed that they put their own brand at eye level on the shelves, while other brands are either way high or on the low shelves, not convinient to reach.
here in SA there is no competition for HEB, all other stores like Albertsons , Kroger, Safeway have left town . HEB ran them out of town.
Its HEB or Walmart or Target for groceries and that is it.. We are retired military so we can use the commissary on base, but not everybody can.

[Chayote]

The only flour I buy now is bakers flour is large bags. I do notice a slight difference between two of the brands I buy but not enough to have a preference between the two. When we move to Adelaide I'll be buy 25kg bags from Costco. We have Costco here but it's a 45 minute drive... even so, we've been in lockdown for so long that I forget what it's like to drive that far. The current regulations are that we can only drive a radius of 15km from home and that wipes Costco off the list.

There's still a bit of panic buying here, too. For a respiratory virus they strip the shelves of toilet paper. If there's an outbreak of gastro they'll probably stock up on eye drops!

Some of our grocery stores are only opening for 6 hours a day because they don't have the staff to open for longer. A lot of staff have to isolate for 14 days if they come into contact with a COVID patient.