Typ – Journey From A Polish Kitchen

If you go into a Polish shop you will often find a huge assortment of flours:
Mąka żytnia – rye flour
Mąka orkiszowa – spelt flour
Mąka gryczana – buckwheat flour
Mąka ziemniaczna or mąka kartoflana or skrobia – potato flour
Mąka pszenna – wheat flour
Mąka kukurydziana – cornmeal – maize flour
Mąka razowa – wholemeal flour
Mąka Grahama – wholewheat flour
Pelne ziarno – whole grain

Rye Flour – Wholemeal Wheat Flour – Wheat Flour

Some of my recipes baked with different grains

Wheat Flour

There is no self raising flour in Poland – Polish cooks add baking powder, which is often sold in little sachets, to flour as a rising agent.
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Polish food regulations require the use of a numerical system expressed as typ.
Typ is expressed as grams of ash per 100 kg of flour.
Typ is calculated as the amount of ash that remains after the complete burning of the dry mass in a sample of the product at a specified temperature.
For example – typ 500 means that in every 100 kg of flour there is around 500g of ash.
The higher the typ number the higher the gluten content of the wheat.

Popular Wheat Flours

Mąka tortowa – this is a fine cake flour – typ 450 – excellent for buns, cakes and tort (gateaux or layer cake).
Mąka krupczatka – this is a coarse ground flour – typ 450- 500 – excellent for shortcrust type pastry and crumbles.
Mąka poznańska – typ 500 – excellent for noodles, pierogi and a sauce thickener.
Mąka wrocławska – typ 500 – excellent for pancakes and yeast cakes.
Mąka luksusowa – typ 550 – excellent for yeast cakes – similar to American all-purpose flour and English plain flour.
Mąka uniwersalna – typ 480 – all-purpose wheat flour

In the past in Poland to be called chleb – bread had to contain rye, either on its own or mixed with wheat or other flours.

White bread rolls – bułeczki – would be made with mąka luksusowa – typ 550.

Nowadays you can find the kind of flour best for English style wheat bread – a strong flour – Mąka chlebowa – typ 750 – but I have not used any of these yet.