high extraction flour

Today's bake is a miche made with home milled high extraction flour.   I have been working on this for awhile, but ran into some problems with overheating the flour while milling, which led to some notable failures.    Today, I was extra careful, and kept the flour cool throughout.   The dough was very tacky at 73%, and seemed to lose its shape every time I turned my back on it.   It held together enough to make bread though, so I declare it a success.   The crust had that mottled look that only wet tacky doughs seem to get.

And the crumb came out ok notwithstanding the mouse hole.

We always seem to photograph slices, but what about the morsels we actually eat?

I almost forgot to say something about the taste.   This is very hearty, almost like an unenriched whole wheat loaf, but without the bite back of the bran.   I sifted out around 1/3 of the bran, and used only the powdery flour and not the coarse farina.   Altogether a very pleasant flavorful loaf.  

Formula and Method:

* Golden flour is the part of the milled wheat that can get through an extra fine sieve.   It is the part of the endosperm that mills to a fine powder (the inner core) plus tiny flecks of bran which gives it a  golden color.   With the technology I have available, I cannot separate out the bran from the powdery flour to get white flour as that requires use of controlled airflow which lifts out the lighter particles of bran from the heavier flour.   The golden flour does not include the coarse meal from the outer endosperm aka farina.   With multiple fine millings a lot of the farina can be crushed and so can pass through an extra fine sieve, but I didn't do that this time, and just took the flour that resulted from medium to coarse settings of my Komo.

Bonus photography lesson:

Winter posting can be frustrating as it can be so hard to get a good picture of the crumb.   By the time this loaf was ready to cut, daylight was gone.   Today, after giving up on getting a good photograph, I remembered that my husband has some very bright work lights.   So I fished one of them out of the basement,  and gave it a try.   I pointed the light at the wall, rather than at the slice, to avoid a bright light bouncing off the bread.   But just to demonstrate the difference between regular indoor light plus the camera flash versus a really, really bright light:

Yes, that's the same slice of bread as pictured above.

Here is the light in all its blinding glory:

Final question:   Why is it that when I preview the post, I can see the formula table with borders around the cells, but when I post, the borders disappear?   Any way to fix?  

Lately I have been baking with flour home-milled from hard red winter wheat from Upinngil Farm in Gill Massachusetts.     I have also been experimenting with sifting the milled flour to achieve different results, and after reading about bolting - see Andy's post and note below - with bolting as well.   My first attempt at bolting using a knee-high nylon didn't go well.   The less said the better.    Then I realized that cheese cloth has a fine mesh and might possibly be well suited for the task at hand.    So I have been playing around with using cheese cloth to bolt fresh milled flour, without much good baking results.   

Today, I came back to it and made another attempt.    I decided to use my regular white starter, rather than working with a whole wheat starter, which adds another layer of complexity.   And also constrained the process by determining that I would only use the Upinngil whole wheat for the final dough.   

I proceeded as follows:  

1.  Mill 514 g of wheat berries at medium setting

2.  Sift with #24 wire strainer

3.  Mill what is caught in the sieve at fine setting

4.  Sift with #30 wire strainer

This process removed 50g of bran.

5.   Place flour on top of a square of cheese cloth and form a bag by folding up corners and securing with a twist tie

6.  Shake, bounce, bump, etc. into a wooden bowl.    (Note this step takes awhile.)

At the end of this process I had 226g of golden flour with only tiny flecks of bran in it, and left in the cheese cloth was 226g of a coarse flour / semolina mix.  

I decided to make two loaves - one with the more refined flour, and one with the less refined flour.  They both came out quite breadlike.

The one with the refined flour was a bit better behaved than the other.

I would say both tasted good with the second loaf with a much more rustic, coarse crumb.

Here are the formulae:

I mixed the first dough for 10 minutes, and the second for 20.    It was necessary to add a bit of medium rye to the second dough to make it adhere.   I was very worried about over fermenting and proofing these loaves so I erred on the side of under-doing it.    I fermented the first loaf for 2 hours, and the second for 1.5 hours, both with two stretch and folds.   Then proofed each of them for only 45 minutes.   They were baked together at 450F with steam for 20 minutes, and without for 25.  

Note:   Bolting is an old (say 17th century) method of refining flour by passing milled wheat through successively finer and finer cloth mesh tubes.   See for instance http://www.angelfire.com/journal/millbuilder/boulting.html%C2%A0%C2%A0   So technically I have done a hybrid of metal sifting and cloth bolting, as I only have one cloth mesh size.  

[Addendum:  For those of you who think that milling, sifting, and now bolting is too messy, please note that only 13g of flour was missing in action.    I'm sure it will be all cleaned up in the fullness of time. ] 

Last week, I have been milling my Turkish wheat berries (don’t quite know the type-probably ordinary winter wheat, but definitely not red) using my trusty Hawos easy mill, and noticed that during the first phase of my intermediary milling (coarse), I found tiny bran particles along with the middlings . I decided to try a labor intensive method of separating the bran from the other particles. Bran weighs less than the coarse endosperm particles, so I used a hair drier to blow air through the coarse mixture while stirring it. ½ hour later, this method left me with copious amounts of bran scattered on my laps and on the floor and the endosperm particles with some bran intact remained in the bowl. I know.. I must be crazy, but I was testing a reliable way to remove bran from equally sized endosperm particles, and that surely isn’t practical. I milled the remainder mixture into fine flour, sifted it with a fine mesh sieve, and obtained really fluffy yellowish flour, with tiny specs of powdered bran. I declared it: Mebake’s high extraction flour. It was very soft and fine textured, and had a beautiful wheaty aroma. I didn’t know the extraction %, but assumed that it belongs to the league of artisanal flours. My wife made some chocolate cookies with this flour and the result was the best cookies I’ve ever made at home: Crunchy, delicate, and full of flavor. I wish I had a 50 kg sack of this stuff. I decided to put the flour to test, and bake genuine artisanal bread with it: Miche a callier, from Hamelman’s BREAD. I stuck to the recipe and the procedures, although the stiff levain did ripe in less than 8 hours. The dough received 3 stretches and folds at 40 minute intervals. I noticed some tears during S&F, and I would attribute it to the flour being green (freshly milled), and the milling heat. Here it is:

The flavor at 12 hours is wheaty / nutty and very aromatic. The crust was crunchy / chewy, and the crumb soft and creamy, but not as moist as i guessed it would be. 

The flour

The flour, although difficult to obtain using my method, was worth it.

With all of the attention on the Miche breads of various members, I was motivated to try the one dmsnyder posted on. I was taken by the flavor comments and the use of toasted wheat germ. I took a stab at replicating the high extraction flour David used by combining 25% whole wheat flour with 75% Better For Bread (my stock AP). I use the fresh ground WW from Organic Wheat Products (flourgirl51) which is stone ground. She offers it ground fine but I have been using the more course ground product which you can see in the bread. David's photos seem to indicate a finer grind which would make the dough less speckled. Perhaps I'll run some of my WW through the mill to take it down a step in particle size. I think this would be a great excuse to order some Golden Buffalo high extraction flour.

I also took Davids suggestion with oven temperature and pre heated at 500F then lowered to 440F after loading and steaming. The vents were blocked for the first 20 minutes then opened for another 45 minutes. As you see, the crust is quite boldly baked. The areas of expansion are a lovely golden color. The singing is quite pronounced as would be expected with such a well colored loaf.

I think the next time I make this bread, I'll scale it up to 2kilo's as David suggested and shape it more oval. My dough weighed 1240 grams before baking and just 1002 grams after cooling for 30 minutes. The internal temperature was 205F when I pulled it from the stone. Normally I would dry out the crust by opening the door slightly after the oven had been shut down. In this case I thought the 65 minute bake was ample time in the oven to harden the crust.

I'm waiting for later in the day to slice this bread with dinner. Hopefully it will pare well with chicken piccata as bruchetta. I'll try to post a crumb shot later.

ADDED CRUMB SHOT AND COMMENTS:

First I have to say this bread has taken me to a place I have not been before. Such simple ingredients are blended with time and careful handling to create a most wonderful eating experience. This is one of those times where the sum is greater than the parts. I believe David mentioned thinking that he thought the deep flavor was coming from the crust but in fact the soft, chewy crumb has this flavor all on its own. I don't profess to understand why the addition of a small amount of toasted wheat germ makes this flavor so unique (I'm guessing that's it) but I'm sold. Everyone loved the rich flavor of the crumb. The crust was shattering as I cut it, pieces flying everywhere even after 6 hours of cooling. My wife was not as fond of the crispy, crunchy crust on her teeth but the dog was happy to relieve her of the trimmed edges. I had made some dark turkey broth earlier in which I dunked some chunks of this miche. A perfect melding of flavors if I do say so. Just wonderful!

We ate the bread with dinner of chicken piccata and a tomato and onion salad with my custom dressing of abundant Gorgonzola cheese and spices. The salad is a bold side dish but believe me the bread held its own with the lemon from the piccata and also the garlic/onion/cheese dressing. A wonderful meal.

I might like to try this slightly less boldly baked for the general public. I do think the over all awesomeness (is that a word?) of this bread will be enhanced by baking as a larger loaf. I would love to make a huge 8 pounder. If only I can find a way to bake it. Hmmmm.

This will probably be my last post for awhile at FreshLoaf. The days are ticking away and before I know it I will be in a little town in southern France in the foot hills of the Maritime Alps. I will be starting a blog, and those of you who are so inclined will be able to follow my adventures in search of regional breads and their bakers, the trials of a Victory Garden, the building of a wood oven (I hope!) and daily life in a small mountain town.

Now back to the Gerard's Pain Levain. For this bake I have taken MC's thorough description of  Levain "a la Gerard", Shiao Ping's and David's bake and tossed them all together and did what the dough wanted me to. The overall formula was not changed from the original posting.

• The Levain I have developed for the last several bakes is a little work horse. I have been using it quite a bit so it has remained strong and I have found it only requires a two-build process to triple in size, even with the addition of a pinch of salt. Throughout the whole process I maintained a warm environment for the beasties to flourish.
• I allowed one hour for a good autolyse at my ddt of 82*. A good gluten structure started to develop.
• The mixing was with a KA on low for the entire mix. To maintain the constant temperature of 82* I went as far as to preheat the mixing bowl with warm water. The air temp of my house is a chilly 64*. After the autolyse, I mixed for one minute, added diluted starter (with a small protion of the formula water) and salt, and mixed for an additional 2 minutes, then let it rest in a nice warm environment in the proofing cabinet.
• Two gentle folds were done an hour apart. 
• After an hour's rest, the dough was gently turned onto a floured surface. The dough at this point still needed some gentle encouragement to maintain it shape. I used the technique that Gerard described to MC, a stretch to the North and South, wait ten minutes and then a  stretch to the East and West, etc.  The 8 extra folds did the trick (considering it was 80% hydration.)
• The shaping was done with the mantra in mind of "GENTLE... and Deliberate" as shown on MC's great video. I was taken by something that Gerard said when shaping the batards, about moving the air in the dough around ... and that is what it felt like. The dough was filled with air pockets that you could actually redistribute. I need some more practice controlling the batard with wet dough.
• I like to start at 500*, add steam, load loaves,add more steam turn the oven down to 460*

The crumb has a nutty,creamy and very, very mild sourdough taste was detectable. I was very surprised with the crust of this bread the last two bakes. I think by not retarding the shaped loaves, it developed a crust that was a thin as an egg shell.

                                                                                      Levain in Proofer

                                                                                              Final folds

                                                                                                Divide

This is being sent to Susan@Wildyeast.con for this weeks Yeastspotting....Thanks Susan

My adventures in home milling and sifting continue. Most recently, I did fairly extensive additional test milling and sifting of Wheat Montana Bronze Chief hard red spring berries. In the past, I regularly used flour from two main sources: Heartland Mill, and Wheat Montana. Heartland Mill is a good source of hard red and hard white winter wheat flour and berries. Wheat Montana is a good source of hard red and hard white spring wheat flour and berries. After sending test flours from the milling and sifting session with Wheat Montana Bronze chief hard red spring wheat berries, I wanted to follow that with a "production run" and some test baking. I've already posted a fairly unusual "Reconstituted Mash Bread" made from Wheat Montana hard white and red spring wheat berries. The following is a more ordinary sourdough made from high extraction flour from the same milling session.

A spreadsheet in xls and html format is posted with the recipe and the sourdough timing. Additional photos are posted.

The formula is again much the same as previous test bakes. It consists of a levain contributing 15% fermented flour to total recipe flour made with equal quantities of sifted rye, sifted spelt, and freshly milled and sifted  "cream flour" from my milling session, combined with an overnight soaker of the remaining dough ingredients, which is the remaining "cream flour", 2% salt, about 76.5% water, and 1% malt syrup. The estimated ash content of my "cream flour" is about 1.1%, so it is similar once again to previous high extraction flours that I model after Heartland Mill Golden Buffalo flour.

The bread had some large and small holes, as the dough at 76.5% hydration was a little softer than I expected. As before, it takes some experience to learn the amount of water that my home milled and sifted flours will absorb. I slightly overestimated the amount of water in this case and ended up with a bread more reflective of a fairly soft and wet dough. The crumb was light and flavorful, which was expected, since I've had excellent results from Wheat Montana Prairie Gold and Bronze Chief flours in the past.