July 19, 2015 - 1:29pm
Recipe to test heirloom wheat?
I just got some locally grown heirloom wheat from the Hollywood Farmers Market: Sonora Gold is a pale soft wheat; Glenn is a deep red hard winter wheat; and Triple Four is supposed to be an in-between 'all purpose' sort.
I'd like to bake something very simple with these wheats to compare their flavor to my commodity organic white wheat berries (hard and soft) that I get from the local co-op.
What would you make to test the flavor more than the gluten/baking properties of the wheat?
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I'd go for a simple, basic yeasted loaf; flour, water, salt, commercial yeast and perhaps a smidgin of lard. That way the only variable you will be changing is the flour itself, which makes it a much fairer test. I would also suggest adding a control loaf using your usual flour - that way you'll be able to see how good (or bad) the posh flours are compared to a baseline sample. And whether they're worth spending a premium on...
HTH :-)
Witty.
I'm thinking more of something like a simple cracker or flatbread, to avoid confounding the airiness of higher gluten wheat with the flavor of the grain. But maybe a very simple loaf compared to a loaf from a commodity wheat of similar percentage would be appropriate.
a new flour with a crepe first. :)
One idea might be to take a familiar one loaf yeasted recipe (with a 50% hydration)
When cutting the bread, compare crumbs, crusts and flavours. :)
Whole wheat pancakes. Try em with just butter first before going for the syrup.
I like the idea of crepes/pancakes as an idea for something that can be made very simple and plain to taste the wheats. I've already made a single flatbread/cracker from a very coarse grind of each of the wheats (got a new mill about the same time as the wheats), which gave some initial clue (the one called 'Glenn', a medium hard red wheat, was really nutty and delicious and that one disappeared first of all of them. I'll be posting some formal tasting notes with photos after the pancakes, and eventually some breads.