With help from this forum, I have been able to get good results with the tartine basic sourdough recipe.
Recently, I have been milling my own wholemeal flour, and this has thrown my hydration comletely off. For the standard 'white' flour, I am still using the same store-bought brand.
I use the flour around 2-4 hours after milling, and although the consistency of the freshly mixed dough resembles that when using store-bought flour (from the same supplier as the corn I mill), the finished results are drastically different. Usually the dough ends up being wetter, but there have also been a couple of times when it has been drier. In other words, the finished consitency is much less predictable.
I realise I need to keep trying and learn from experience with the milled flour (get to know it), but my question is, are there others who have had similar experiences when starting to mill their own flour?
Best regards,
John.
Replies
My freshly milled flour has always needed the same amount of water. I have not had your problem.
ok thanks for the reply LD.
I'll just keep practising :-)
(next attempt this weekend).
I have had some difficulties with using 100% freshly milled flour. I found the hydration a little trickier to gauge and gluten development was a little strange - the dough felt a little like plastercine. I stated aging the flour for about 1 week and everything was fine again. Good luck.
I have been milling my own flour for many years now. I assume you are talking of the Wholegrain Tartine, which from memory also has 200 grams of white flour ( to 800 grams wholegrain). I have had no problems making this bread with flour straight from the MIll (I use Kialla hard red). As with any change of flour, you may have to adjust the water slightly. I have not done that in my case and found the dough to be very soft and manageable.
Thanks for the replies.
Yes Martin, it is the recipe with (30%) white flour.
I attempted it again this weekend, with better results than last. It is the same flour I have previously used, but now I buy the grain instead of the flour. The general trend seems to be that less hydration is needed when freshly milled.
I will also try your suggestion Panevino, of letting the flour age a week, but I seem to recall on another forum someone mentioning that Jeffrey Hamelman had written that flour not used within 24 hours of milling should be aged 2 weeks before use (can't remeber why).