A composite papermaking fabric having an upper support fabric including upper warp and weft yarns and a lower contact fabric including lower warp and weft yarns. The upper fabric is woven in a first weave pattern which forms a support surface and the lower fabric is woven in a broken twill weave pattern which forms the contact surface. The composite fabric includes paired binder yarns which weave in alternating sequences with the upper and lower fabrics binding them together. The broken twill weave pattern provides plural floats of cross-machine direction yarns passing outwardly of a plurality of adjacent lower warp yarns forming a plurality of adjacent cross-machine direction floats. Certain of the paired floats comprise a lower weft yarn and a binder yarn while others may comprise two lower weft yarns. The lower weft yarn floats are positioned to shield and protect the binder yarn floats along their entire length.