[throwaway219450]

I’ve always found King Arthur to be reliable? Their recipes are good and include metric, you can get the flour anywhere and they’re very proactive with support if you have questions about tweaking. Also good books.

Good bread exists, it’s just not cheap like it is in Europe.

[nkrisc]

King Arthur recipes are good in my limited home baking experience. As long as you remain somewhat near to it, you’ll get something edible.

I’ve found though for things like hydration or proofing times your environment is going to have a noticeable impact on that.

King Arthur recipes are written with their products in mind, so if you’re using other flour make sure to check the protein content and that it matches! I’ve made that mistake before when I had consistently bad results and realized the flour I had was quite a bit lower in protein content despite having the same general “all purpose” moniker.

[dredmorbius]

KA do make specific bread flours (high-gluten / high-protein), so that if you're used to those a GP or pastry flour will yield far less gluten development.

That said, I've used a cheap bleached white AP flour when that's all that's available and had ... quite good results. My preference is bread flours, and generally at least some whole wheat in the mix.