The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Type of flour

Bread and Salt's picture
Bread and Salt

Type of flour

Hello all, I want to make healthy sourdough bread using the healthiest flour I can lay my hands on. Where I live, resources are limited and getting bulk is restricted to mills who only sell by 50kg bags.

My choices are between whole wheat hard berry claiming no additives and no enzymes added and having protein of 13%, its kinda cheap in cost. The other is type T150 organic from France with no additives also but for 52$ per 25g. The final choice is white bread flour which the mill does not give me any information at all, they keep referring to it as bread flour zero.

My question and concern is if I chose the whole wheat or the French flour do they have enough elasticity to produce rustic sourdough without adding improvers or gluten? And if I chose to invest in a pro mill and produce my own wheat to ensure the natural result of flour, would that make a reasonably risen loaf?

I've been contacting bakers and millers and artisans and each lectures a different approach to a point where I am losing interest and hope in make the purest form of bread using no chemicals or any unnatural intervention. Need help please!

doughooker's picture
doughooker

For sourdough, option #1, the whole wheat, however, I would add a small quantity of diastatic malt, also known as malted barley flour. Do a Google search on those terms and see what comes up.

ElPanadero's picture
ElPanadero

You can't really get fresher than having your own grain mill imo but I realise it is an expense and a bit of a luxury. Owning a manual grain mill also provides you with a great long term food storage (survival) option should your part of the world befall any significant disaster resulting in the shops going dry. I own both an electric grain mill and a very cheap manual grain mill (£50) as a backup in case the electric grid goes down. With these in place I have the following advantages: - I can buy sacked grains in bulk (25kg sacks) which is a very cheap way to buy flour - I can vacuum seal the grains into smaller quantities and store them more or less indefinitely (many years for sure) - I get the freshed flour possible by grinding my own and confidence that nothing has been added beyond that point - I can make new sourdough starters quickly and reliably from the freshly ground flour - I can buy large quanities of Wheat, Rye, Spelt, Oats etc without having to worry about storage dates and flour going rancid - I can also grind seeds and a multitude of other things for use in my breads inc: Fennel seeds, caraway seeds, dried rosemary, buckwheat, millet and so on. As I said, grain mills can be expensive and seen as a luxury but I believe that is recouped over time. Any enthusiastic domestic baker has the problem that they would like to have a wide variety of flours at hand to create different loaves and tastes but knows that flour has an effective "use by" date at which point it can become rancid and of poor quality. This forces them to buy flour in smaller quantities which is much less cost effective. Bakeries of course can buy flour in sacks and get the bulk discount knowing they will get through all that flour in no time at all. I own a Schnitzer Grain mill which has corundum stones for grinding and also has a flaker which I use to create flaked oats from organic oat grains/groats (makes great porridge!). It's a beautiful mill and works really well and can grind to varying degrees of courseness (good for making chopped rye etc).

 

Anyway, I hope this info helps you reach a decision. ATB EP

Bread and Salt's picture
Bread and Salt

I am fantasising about having my own mill but the problem doesn't lie in the cost of the mill but the fact that having whole wheat freshly milled might not produce a nice fat loaf. I am planning to sell those babies since its easy here and am getting a lot of requests now. Home milling can actually help my marketing since people love the fresh and home made food. Just wanted to be sure if I won't be needing to result to additives.

One thing more, how do you know what kind is the wheat berries you are purchasing? Are you getting them from a mill or a grain store with good knowledge of the wheat grains origins

Thanks for your help

ElPanadero's picture
ElPanadero

Ok, sounds from your statement that you are planning to make and sell a quantity of bread rather than being just a domestic baker making loaves maybe once a week. That makes the decision different. Grinding your own flour is fine on a domestic basis but doesn't scale up. I can grind flour for a loaf in a matter of a minute or so. Scaling that up to make flour for a lot of loaves is a different proposition. It would take too long and the stones would get too hot being in constant use so much which would result in the auto-shut off kicking in. In addition, hot stones affect the flour adversely.

If you are going to be a commercial baker, even of small size, go for sacked flours rather than sacked grains as you can be confident of getthing through the flours before their expiry date. I get my grains from a reputable supplier, all organic and a big name in the industry. Some of the grains can be imported though but the website usually says what kind of grains they are. There is also a miller within 50 miles of me with a working windmill who I can get wheat grains from. I have never had any problem with the flours I make from these grains. They make good tasty loaves. I never use flour enhancers or improvers or add anything extra. It is always simply flour, water, yeast and salt.

Yerffej's picture
Yerffej

The healthiest flour would be an older wheat like Turkey Red Wheat that has been grown organically and used to make a sourdough bread.

Jeff

Bread and Salt's picture
Bread and Salt

Your comments are very helpful, I think I will work my way with flour sacs first then get a 2500$ mill that makes 50kg in one hour using cool blades.

As for the flour I think I will experiment with the whole wheat flour that the mill proposed, hope it would work well with some barley and rye.