March 10, 2018 - 12:30pm
Burnt Flour---a new/old trend
After seeing the winning chef on this seasons Top Chef win with a pasta dish using Grano Arso flour I just did a little search on Google and found this interesting article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-16/burnt-flour-grano-arso-in-pasta-and-bread-what-is-it-how-to-use
This is something I need to start experimenting with myself.
Anybody have any experience with using Burnt Flour?
Share
Hi Ian,
I have used Grano Arso a few times for bread (see this post), which came out quite good, and for pasta, which is outstanding. I encountered it in southern Italy a couple of years back and have tried to reproduce it in a number of ways. Now that I have a home mill the easiest way is just to put the grains in the oven at around 375˚F for 15 minutes or so when they start to smoke, then mill them. I've experimented with only a couple of different grain varieties so far, but the number of options is immense. You'll find the tastes to be quite different when blended into regular doughs.
-Brad
and they warn to only use a very small amount in your bread as there is essentially no gluten in the burnt ( browned flour). There are some good articles out there about it. Pasta would be easiest use since you don’t want it to rise
Hi Ian
Yes, I will say I have had some experience adding burned [flour] to doughs. I have been preparing a rather elaborate blog post on it for some time, but I keep wanting to do one more experiment with the method before posting. Blame my background as a research scientist for that: results must be reproducible, never anecdotal. Indeed, just this evening it dawned on me perhaps why my preparations have never come out quite the way it did the first time I tried this. So, yet one more experiment to be done.
For now, let me say I've been adding my "boldly toasted flour" (it's not quite that, so stay tuned) at a proportion of 1.5-3% of total formula flour, by tossing porridge additions in it, conveniently reducing their clumping while adding some nice notes to the bread to which the porridge is then added. And yes, the preparation I've been using is very versatile - it can favorably improve pastas, polenta, sauces, etc.
And to give due credit: Part of the inspiration for my project came from Courtney Burns and Nick Balla via their Bar Tartine book. In it, they describe their use of "Burned Bread Spice" which, as a powder, is just what the name implies: pulverized burned bread. I've found that backing off the boldness from their blacker-than-black works better for us.
Sorry to be so cryptic. This will motivate me to get it done and posted.
Tom