What’s up with the flours?

HERE'S something distinctly funky going on with the flours I've been getting at the Asian market lately. My last several attempts at bread have all been disastrous; the sponge nearly explodes instead of rising, and has an incredibly sour smell. At first I hoped against hope that it was just some of the local L. sanfranciscensis coming to say hi and turn the bread into sourdough, but no such luck. The one time I plowed ahead and baked the stuff, the loaf smelled like mildew and had grey splotches on the bottom and sides, almost like it had turned moldy in the oven! Naturally, this has been delaying the gelatin experiments (though I do have a nice, accurate new scale now).

On closer inspection, the flour mixture itself smells slightly mildewy. It's worked okay for other recipes, and I haven't gotten sick yet, but I've decided that rather than investigate further, I'm just going to switch to the more expensive stuff and see what happens.

Of course, now's probably just as good a time as any to experiment a bit more with the flour mixture recipe itself. What I'm calling "most-purpose flour" right now is basically just a mixture I tried that worked, and I've stuck with it with relatively few modifications. I may try branching out to some more readily available starches.