Bob’s Red Mill and King Arthur Baking Company are two of the most trusted flour brands among home bakers. Instead of ranking one brand above the other, I compared Bob’s Red Mill vs King Arthur flour across different baking categories: everyday baking, cookies, cakes and desserts, bread, and gluten-free recipes to help you decide which fits best in your pantry.
The “best” flour will of course depend on what you’re making, the texture you prefer, and the results you’re hoping to achieve. A baker making soft, tender cookies will want a different flour than someone chasing a chewy sourdough loaf with a strong crust and open crumb and the same applies to cakes, pastries, gluten-free baking, and everyday recipes where small differences in flour performance can affect the final result.
Everyday Baking: The Pantry Staple Test
For most of us home bakers, all-purpose flour is always stocked in the pantry. It’s really the workhorse of the kitchen. In my kitchen, it’s the flour I reach for to whip up banana bread, weekend pancake breakfasts, birthday cupcakes, and many, many batches of chocolate chip cookies.
Bob’s Red Mill Organic All-Purpose Flour
In muffins and quick breads, Bob’s Red Mill Organic All-Purpose Flour provided enough strength to support rise without making the banana bread feel dense. When used in pancakes, I found that Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose Flour gave enough structure for the batter to hold its shape as I poured and flipped, but still remained tender enough to have the soft and fluffy pancake consistency.
King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
When I used King Arthur’s AP flour to make blueberry muffins, I felt like I wanted a little bit of a more tender crumb. The consistency was totally fine and passable, but I do think that the slightly higher protein content worked against me in this case.
Cookies: Texture Is Everything
Staying in the all-purpose sector, let’s discuss cookies. We touched on cookies earlier when talking about structure, but they deserve their own category because texture preferences can vary dramatically.
Some bakers will seek chewy cookies while others prefer softer results. Some people like their chocolate chip cookies thin and snappy, but I prefer mine almost so soft and gooey you question if they’re underbaked.
Have you ever had Florentine lace cookies? The super thin, chewy, toffee-like, disc-shaped cookies with holes, sandwiched with chocolate in the middle? This is one of my favorite cookies. My family has them every Christmas.
Anyway, the point is that when you make them, you see the batter and dough turn into puddles in the oven (because of the high fat, low flour content). This is a perfect example of the opposite of moderate or robust structure. Keep this example in mind as we get into cookie structure below.
Bob’s Red Mill Organic All-Purpose Flour
In cookie recipes, Bob’s Red Mill typically produces balanced results when it comes to spread and tenderness. The structure is moderate and prevents too much spread but also is slightly softer and more flexible than King Arthur flour. It allows the dough to not stay fixed sitting tall while baking, and evenly melt into a cookie shape.
The flour works particularly well for classic homemade cookie styles where softness and structure are equally important (think thumbprint cookies).
King Arthur’s AP flour will yield slightly thicker, chewier cookies. Many bakers enjoy this characteristic in bakery-style chocolate chip cookies, where chewiness is part of the desired outcome. If you’re asking, “What is a bakery-style chocolate chip cookie?” Another example of this exact texture is what you need for a good Chipwich-style or chocolate chip ice cream sandwich.
In order to hold the ice cream in the middle and be held at least for a few minutes out of the freezer without completely breaking apart in your hands, Chipwich-style cookies have that chewy structure that King Arthur AP flour brings. I would say this is a moderate and robust structure, opposite the Florentine example.
Cake Baking and Delicate Desserts
Cake baking requires a different approach than everyday baking. Usually, I look for tenderness, fine crumb structure, and controlled gluten development. No one wants to bite into a super chewy, tough and stretchy cake (right?).
Bob’s Red Mill Super-Fine Cake Flour
Bob’s Red Mill Super-Fine Cake Flour is milled specifically for delicate baked goods. Its lower protein content (5-8%) helps reduce gluten formation, which contributes to softer cakes and finer crumb structures.
This flour performs especially well in layer cakes, cupcakes, and butter cakes, where tenderness is a priority. If you prefer your banana bread more soft and melt-in-your-mouth, then I would try swapping the all-purpose option for cake flour. You may notice a difference in the tenderness, but be prepared for your shirt to be covered in crumbs with softer bakes. Honestly, it’s worth it in my opinion.
King Arthur Unbleached Cake Flour
King Arthur Cake Flour serves a similar purpose and is designed to create soft, tender cakes with consistent structure. They do add a wheat starch in their mix, unlike Bob’s, which helps to secure a soft, tender crumb and weaken or inhibit gluten formation.
The flour produces reliable results in recipes where texture is especially important, such as white cakes and chiffon cakes. The reason the wheat starch is relevant is because if you are baking a cake and on a time crunch or the stakes are high, and you definitely do not have time to make a second if the first fails, I would reach for King Arthur just for the added structural reassurance.
Bread Baking
Bob’s Red Mill Artisan Bread Flour
When using Bob’s Artisan Bread Flour for bread, I found the dough developed good elasticity, rose well, and created a chewy crumb without becoming overly difficult to handle.
During kneading, it felt strong enough to hold its shape but forgiving enough that small mistakes in hydration or mixing weren’t disastrous (which is key for me because I am admittedly not the most patient with measuring).
King Arthur Bread Flour has developed a devoted following among bread enthusiasts because of its high protein content (12.7%), and the strict protein percentage regulation that King Arthur uses when manufacturing can be a major deciding factor for regular bread bakers, as it allows you as the baker to have a control group, so to speak. So if something goes wrong, you know that the flour was the same as always, as long as you measure correctly, of course.
The additional strength in this flour can be particularly useful in sourdough baking and higher-hydration doughs, like Ciabatta, where structure becomes very important.
Gluten-Free & Specialty Flours
Both brands make excellent all-purpose gluten-free flour blends for everyday baking.
Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour
Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour has become one of the most recognizable gluten-free blends for home baking. It works particularly well in cookies, cakes, muffins, and quick breads where a simple wheat flour substitute is needed.
Beyond its all-purpose blend, Bob’s Red Mill has one of the broadest catalogs of specialty flours available. Some of their options include flours I’ve not seen offered by other brands, like Hazelnut Flour, Quinoa Flour, Coconut Flour and Garbanzo Fava Flour. Their Gluten-Free Almond Flour is my favorite for olive oil cake because it produces an incredibly tender, delicate crumb while still holding together beautifully thanks to the cake’s naturally high fat content.
King Arthur Baking Company Gluten-Free Measure for Measure Flour
King Arthur’s Gluten-Free Measure for Measure Flour is designed as a simple substitute for wheat flour and is my preferred gluten-free flour for cakes and brownies. It creates cakes that are soft enough to feel tender but sturdy enough to support multiple layers.
One thing I’ve always appreciated is how little the cake crumbs shed while frosting. Anyone who’s decorated a cake knows how frustrating it is when loose crumbs get mixed into the icing and ruin the finish. While professional bakers solve this with a crumb coat, most home bakers don’t want to add another hour or two to the process. This flour naturally minimizes that problem, making it much easier to achieve a clean-looking cake.
King Arthur’s specialty lineup isn’t as extensive as Bob’s Red Mill’s, but it’s particularly strong for traditional bread baking. Alongside classic bread and pasta flours, they also offer interesting niche products like rye flour, Irish-style flour for brown breads, semolina flour, their Super 10 Blend of grains and seeds, and pumpernickel flour.
Final Thoughts
Both Bob’s Red Mill and King Arthur have earned their reputations through decades of maintaining the top spot in popular baking flour brands. Both brands’ longevity can be traced back to their grain and farm operations, their employee-owned leadership and their ethics. For everyday baking, both offer excellent all-purpose options, though, Bob’s Red Mill produced slightly softer results while King Arthur delivered structure.
For bread baking, King Arthur’s higher-protein products may appeal to sourdough enthusiasts and artisan bread bakers and for specialty grains, organic products, and gluten-free baking, Bob’s Red Mill’s extensive selection will give you the most flexibility as well as a wider selection of hard-to-find single ingredient flours.
