All-purpose flour is the foundation for everything from chewy cookies and gooey brownies to fluffy muffins and light-as-air cakes. But it’s such a basic pantry staple, like eggs or sugar, that it’s easy to assume all flours bake up the same.
We’re quick to blame our flat cookies and dense muffins on the butter, overmixing, oven temperature, even our mood while we’re baking—which, to be fair, are all pretty important. But what about the flour? This hidden-in-plain-sight ingredient may be playing a bigger role in how well your baked goods turn out than you realize.
Aren’t All Brands of All-Purpose Flour the Same?
While all-purpose flour, by definition, is supposed to be versatile enough for, well, all purposes, it’s reasonable to expect one bag to handle everything from chocolate chip cookies to birthday cakes and banana bread.
But not all brands perform the same. Differences in protein content, wheat variety, bleaching process and milling consistency can all make a difference in the texture, moisture and flavor of your baked goods.
So I put four popular all-purpose flour brands to the test in a side-by-side comparison of common baked goods to see just how noticeable those differences really were. My goal was to find one dependable flour I could count on across a variety of recipes—hence, the Best All-Purpose Flour for Baking.
The Flours I Tested
I chose a mix of premium and budget-friendly all-purpose flours commonly used by home bakers and relatively easy to find in stores or online. I was able to find all four locally, though availability may vary depending on where you live.
Kirkland Signature Organic Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
Protein content: 11.5%
Wheat variety: Hard red wheat flour, organic malted barley flour
Price: Budget-friendly
Availability: Costco warehouses and Costco online
King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
Protein content: 11.7%
Wheat variety: Hard red wheat
Price: Premium-priced
Availability: Widely available at most grocery stores
Bob’s Red Mill Organic Unbleached White All Purpose Flour
Protein content: 10-12%
Wheat variety: Organic hard red wheat
Price: Premium-priced
Availability: Easy to find at larger grocery stores and online retailers
Gold Medal All Purpose Flour
Protein content: about 10–10.5%
Wheat variety: A blend of pure white hard and soft wheat
Price: Budget-friendly
Availability: One of the easiest flours to find nationwide
Overall At a Glance
Best for cookies: Bob’s Red Mill
Best for cakes/cupcakes: Bob’s Red Mill and King Arthur
Best for pastries and quick breads: Bob’s Red Mill and King Arthur
Best value: Gold Medal and Kirkland
Easiest to find: Gold Medal
Most versatile overall: Bob’s Red Mill
The Results
I baked batches of sugar cookies, blueberry scones and chocolate cupcakes with each flour to see just how versatile they really were. And whether the differences between them were actually all that noticeable.
To keep the comparison as consistent as possible, I used the exact same recipe for each bake, changing only the flour. Each batch was baked separately on the same pans, and everything was baked to the same internal temperature.
Basically, I wanted to know: Could one all-purpose flour bake up tender, chewy cookies that don’t overspread, flaky scones with crisp edges and soft centers, and moist, fluffy cupcakes? Or do I need to stock my pantry with a bunch of bags of flour to get consistently good results?
What I found was that the flour made a surprisingly noticeable difference in two of the bakes, and almost none at all in the third.
The Blueberry Scone Test
Scones are a great test for all-purpose flour because they fall somewhere between a pastry and a bread. Which means they need to rise and hold their shape while remaining soft and flaky.
The secret to baking the perfect scones is keeping everything cold, cold, cold. The butter was frozen, then grated into the flour, and once the scone dough was shaped and cut into wedges, I chilled them overnight before baking.
At a Glance
Easiest dough to handle: Bob’s Red Mill and King Arthur
Tallest rise: Bob’s Red Mill and King Arthur
Softest texture: Bob’s Red Mill and Gold Medal
Best overall: Bob’s Red Mill
Kirkland Signature Organic Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
The Kirkland flour scone dough was sticky, and I had to work a bit more flour into it to make it easy to work with. As far as spread, they were pretty middle-of-the-road: they didn’t spread the most or the least. They rose moderately well with gentle doming, the tops browned nicely, and the inside was soft and moist with a hearty texture.
King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
The biggest difference I noticed with the King Arthur flour was how much easier the dough was to handle. It was noticeably less sticky and spread slightly less during baking. They rose nicely and developed beautiful golden-brown tops with perfectly crumbly edges. The insides were soft and tender.
Bob’s Red Mill Organic Unbleached White All Purpose Flour
Similar to King Arthur, the scone dough with Bob’s Red Mill flour was firmer and easier to roll out, cut and transfer to the baking sheet. They spread less than the Gold Medal and Kirkland flours and had a nice golden crust. These scones were the softest inside.
Gold Medal All Purpose Flour
The Gold Medal flour dough was sticky, similar to the Kirkland flour, and needed a bit more flour to make it workable. These spread the most of all of the flours, but still rose fairly well. They developed a nice, crispy crust and were among the softest inside, second only to Bob’s Red Mill.
The Sugar Cookie Test
Sugar cookies turned out to be the most revealing test of the all-purpose flours. With so few ingredients, and flour acting as the primary structural component and a major source of flavor, the differences between the flours were most noticeable here.
For this recipe, I mixed the dough, rolled it into balls, then chilled them overnight. I slightly reshaped the cold dough into taller dough balls before baking them.
At a Glance
Easiest dough to handle: Bob’s Red Mill and King Arthur
Least spread: Bob’s Red Mill and King Arthur
Softest, chewiest texture: Bob’s Red Mill and Gold Medal
Best flavor: Bob’s Red Mill
Best overall: Bob’s Red Mill and King Arthur
Kirkland Signature Organic Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
The Kirkland sugar cookie dough was the stickiest of the group, and next time I’d probably chill it briefly before rolling. These cookies spread the most and baked up large and tall with crackly tops. The texture was hearty and slightly less chewy with a rich buttery flavor.
King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
The King Arthur dough was soft, smooth and easy to roll. These cookies spread among the least and baked up with smoother tops and a tender, chewy texture with classic buttery sugar cookie flavor.
Bob’s Red Mill Organic Unbleached White All Purpose Flour
The Bob’s Red Mill dough was less sticky than the Kirkland and Gold Medal, making it quick and easy to roll into balls. These cookies spread the least and had even tops, a soft melt-in-your-mouth texture and a slightly sweeter flavor. They were also noticeably more yellow than the others.
Gold Medal All Purpose Flour
The Gold Medal dough was very similar to the Kirkland: soft and sticky enough that I’d chill it before rolling next time. The cookies baked up with crisp, crackly tops, soft chewy centers and slightly more noticeable buttery flavor.
The Chocolate Cupcake Test
Chocolate cupcakes turned out to be a really good test of each flour. The rich cocoa flavor and dark color shifted the focus away from appearance and subtle flavor differences and more toward softness, moisture and overall texture.
All four flours mixed into equally smooth, thin batters that I portioned evenly into prepared muffin cups before baking.
Overall, the cupcakes were remarkably similar across the board in terms of appearance and softness. They were all tender and moist inside. The most noticeable difference was in crumb structure, in that some had a more delicate mouthfeel, while others were a bit firmer. But truly, trying to come up with distinctly different tasting notes was a challenge. But I persevered, sampling cupcake after cupcake after cupcake. You know, “for science.”
At a Glance
Best rise: Gold Medal
Softest crumb: Bob’s Red Mill and King Arthur
Sturdiest texture: Gold Medal
Moistest cupcakes: Bob’s Red Mill
Best overall: Bob’s Red Mill and King Arthur
Kirkland Signature Organic Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
The Kirkland cupcakes baked up slightly taller with a somewhat denser texture and sturdier crumb.
King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
While the King Arthur cupcakes didn’t rise quite as tall as the Kirkland or Gold Medal versions, they were softer and more tender with a slightly firmer structure.
Bob’s Red Mill Organic Unbleached White All Purpose Flour
The Bob’s Red Mill cupcakes had the most delicate texture of the group. While they didn’t rise as tall, they baked up exceptionally soft, moist and fluffy inside.
Gold Medal All Purpose Flour
The Gold Medal cupcakes rose the tallest and had a slightly firmer, denser crumb with less delicate texture than the Bob’s Red Mill or King Arthur cupcakes.
So, Which All-Purpose Flour Is Best for Baking?
The good news is that you can’t go wrong with any of these flours for making soft, tender cookies, fluffy scones and moist cupcakes.
But after testing them side by side across all three bakes, each flour definitely had its strengths. Gold Medal was affordable, easy to find and performed especially well in the cookies and cupcakes, while Kirkland offered a budget-friendly bulk price and baked up moist scones and fluffy cupcakes. King Arthur repeatedly produced doughs that were easier to handle, along with baked goods that had a softer, more delicate texture overall.
Across all three bakes, Bob’s Red Mill was the flour that stood out the most for me. The doughs were easier to work with, the cookies held their shape while staying soft and chewy, and the scones and cupcakes had the most delicate texture overall. So if I’m only adding one bag of flour to my cart, this is it.
But truly, the differences between these all-purpose flours weren’t dramatic enough to make it worth an extra trip to the store. Any one of these flours will serve you well. But if you bake often, you may find that choosing one reliable flour you can count on makes sharing homemade cookies, scones and cupcakes even more rewarding.
