December 13, 2014 - 1:41pm
Questions on flour types
So I have some recipes that call for "high extraction flour", which I thought was the "white whole wheat flour" I purchased (King Arthur Brand), but then I saw another recipe that calls for both white whole wheat flour and high extraction flour.
What kind and brand of flours do you use for your high extraction flour?
I typically use white unbleached, whole wheat, rye and the white whole wheat.
Share
White whole wheat is actually straight up whole wheat flour; it's lighter in color because it's made from a different strain of wheat called white wheat. Most whole wheat flour (in the US) is made from red wheat. To the best of my knowledge, KAF is the only large flour supplier who carries the white stuff. I'm sure there's some smaller mills producing it, but they're not near me.
High-extraction flour is flour which has had some of the germ and bran removed, but not all of it, like with white flour. It can be made from red or white wheat. It is often described in terms of extraction percentage, i.e., 85% extraction, 90% extraction. What those numbers mean, respectively, is that 15% or 10% percent of the larger bits have been sifted out of the flour, making it not quite whole wheat, but definitely not white flour.
This seems to be a more specialty item; you can try looking for local or online millers who will sell you some, or you can make your own. If you have or have access to a mill, you can buy some wheat berries and sift your own and get a nice extraction rate; there are a number of people on this forum who do this. Dabrownman says he feeds the extra sifted out bits to his starter and it loves it.
I've had reasonably good luck buying stone ground wheat flour (which tends to be a little courser) and sifting it myself. I bought a bunch of Arrowhead Mills organic stone ground wheat on sale last spring and tapped it through a fine mesh strainer and got about a 90% extraction that I was fairly happy with.
I use this formula (by Joe Sloane) for a high extraction flour substitute:
100 g high extraction flour = 41 g bread flour + 59 g whole wheat flour
Works very well for me!
Karin
Thanks a lot both of you for your help.
Do you know any name brands that sell pre-sifte high extraction ready to go?
I am excited to try my recipes again with the appropriate flours.
has Golden Buffalo and bolted Turkey for sale on their web store, in smaller packaging. I've used King Arthur Hi-X, and Milanaise T80 (they sift it through a #50 mesh), but they are in 50 lb. bags. KA isn't producing the Hi-X at the moment, because they can't get the organic wheat in sufficient quantity. I recently bought a #50 mesh on Amazon, so I can sift my own from locally-purchased whole wheat flour.
King Arthur take notice, Kroger sells nice white whole wheat flour, often for the same price as their unbleached AP. Re: high extraction, couldn't you add some bran and wheat germ to AP to approximate it?
Central Milling has a website where you can buy their HEF 85. I've used it and like it very much.
The extraction rate refers to how much ash is left after burning. Type 85 has 15% left.