November 4, 2015 - 5:22pm
Grain choice for home milled flour for quickbread
I've been happily milling red fife wheat for awhile now for my sourdough breads to great success. I'd now like to make some quick breads such as banana bread, cranberry walnut, maybe quince, and would like to home mill. Any suggestions for the type of wheat berries (or other grains?) to get? Modifications to usual quickbread recipes?
Thanks,
Jeff
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For banana bread, I have used soft white wheat with some success. The red competes with the flavor of the banana, and since it is a quick bread, I don't need the strength of the hard wheat.
Thanks Barry. Do you find you need to adjust your recipes at all with the fresh milled wheat?
I do a blend: 60% soft wheat 40% hard white wheat. Adjust as necessary to get texture you prefer.
Try a more ancient variety such as Einkorn or Kamut they add an interesting flavor and aren't as glutenous. Also a good chance to try some other type of grain such as barley or millet.
Jeff, for yeast based breads, yes, I find that home milled is not as thirsty as KA Whole Wheat - meaning if I add 100 grams of water to home milled hard spring red wheat, it will be slacker than if I added the same amount of water to commercial whole wheat, though it is possible that is a result of a difference in the fineness of the grind. Often, I try to make the recipe once exactly as written using the flour called for, then repeat using home milled flour and try to adjust the water content to get a similar feel, but it is not a science since I may add additional water and get the same feel, and 20 minutes later, the home milled version feels different that the commercial version . This is especially true when you try to convert from AP or Bread Flour to home milled wheat.
I'm heading to the store today, so I'll see what they have. Pondering more of a cake approach to use up some quince I just poached. I found a rhubarb cake that seems like it would convert well. I'll report back.
Jeff
or a combination along with grated nuts. Go easy on the Baking powder. Use lots of beaten egg whites. :)
Thanks again for the suggestions. I used a soft white wheat, and made a quince almond crumb cake based on this rhubarb cake recipe: http://food52.com/recipes/17410-rhubarb-almond-crumb-cake.
There was no baking soda or powder in the recipe, so all the loft came from beating the egg/sugar mixture. The eye-opener for me was that the wheat really was "soft". I use a Victorio hand mill, and when grinding red fife wheat for bread, I need two hands and extra help from my legs to get it milled. With the soft wheat, I could easily mill with one hand. I guess that's why they call it soft. Duh.
I've got plenty more of the soft white wheat, plus I picked up some einkorn to try on another occasion.
Oh...and it tasted great!
Looks delicious.
Not sure about your mill but when I run softer grains through mine I always follow up with harder grains to clean the stones off. (KoMo electric mills)