New to Baking

I'm afraid whatever I know about flour is from books, and, not working knowledge. But I should not bother too much about labelling the flour, rather, it's more important to determine the protein content. And, having roughly determining that, I'd go on to say that great breads may not only be made from strong flour.

Take your time browsing the Beginner's Forum, there are very helpful tutorials. Our Sourdough Recipe Section has lots of scrumptious recipes, all tried and tested. Feel free to ask if you hit a 'brick', though I'm sure we'll be hearing good news from you soon.

This bit is from Shirley Corriher's Cookwise...

1. Strong flour is from the hard spring wheats.

2. To tell the protein content of flour....a little over 2 cups of bread flour will absorb 1 cup of water, producing a sticky dough ball when processed for about 30 seconds. Perform the same test with cake flour (low protein level), and you will find that it takes over 2 1/2 cups to form a similar sticky dough ball.

Happy exploring and baking!
TP

I'm going to ask around about using freshly milled flours. I've read that flours are not really good to use freshly milled. They need to be oxidised before the gluten can function well. On the other hand, I know that Martin Prior grinds and uses his own flour within hours. I'll go look for him....

TP

hi candice

sounds like you are keen grinding your own - i don't know alot about that but if you look in a book - 'the bread builders'  by Daniel Wing & Alan Scott there is a reference to home milling on page 40, so maybe you can find them in a forum or website to ask some questions

a good book i've used is 'local breads' by Daniel Leader - the instructions for creating leaven are simple and work well + lots of recipes which, all i've tried, have worked well

enjoy
 cheers
ben

Hi Candice, Most of the time the bread  being hard as a brick is due to too little water in your dough or too little time for bulk fermentation. 700ml of water to 1kg of high protein flour should be fine unless you are using a very wet leaven. After the dough is mixed leave it in the bowl for around 2 hrs or untill it allmost doubles in size before shaping and final rise. I would advise you to practice on standard bakers flour at around 13% protein before you use your own milled flour thereby eliminating the flour as a possible cause of your problems (crawl before you walk) Good luck..

Welcome!

Ben, could you pls add a word or two about Dan Leader's book in our Book Recommendation thread? Appreciate that.

Cheers
TP

I've wondered the exact same thing, having read it in more than one bread book.  Rice has to age a certain length of time before it's edible too.  I'll look it up in my bread book library and see what I can find out.  Mind you, I've also read more than one post by people on three different sites who grind their own wheat so.....I'll look it up.

I have just started home milling a few weeks ago.  Here is what I have read about home milling and the guidelines that I follow.  The flour you grind needs to be used right away or left to oxidise for 2 to 6 weeks.  I have been using my flour within minutes of grinding and any left over I save to be used weeks latter.

Hydration is higher for home milled wheat because it soaks up more of the water.  I have done 80% hydration without any problems.  I forget the name for this next technique but adding water to your ground flour and let it sit longer than you normally would before adding your starter.  Most flours take 20 to 30 minutes of sitting I have been letting my fresh ground sit for 4 hours before adding the starter. 

Different flour types:  You really are ending up with a product that isn't something you can buy in the store and it works differently than what you can buy.  Learn to use it by seeing how it develops.  I think the biggest help for me was to quit timing the steps in my bread making.  You have to let the dough rise and sometimes it takes a lot more time than what a cookbook says.

Here are a couple of pictures of a whole wheat sourdough loaf.  The crumb was light and soft.

[img]http://djardine.mooo.com/albums/BBQ/P7200855.JPG[/img]

The cumb shot.

[img]http://djardine.mooo.com/albums/BBQ/P7210856.JPG[/img]