Playing with durum

Okay, okay, I know it's not bread, but today's experimenting touches on a couple of interests to do with my bread baking. One, I'm trying out the new Ankarsrum mixer in all kinds of different ways, and two, I bought a bag of durum atta flour to play around with. And as we needed something for dinner tonight, and the garden is starting to produce a few things, I thought I'd make pasta!

First, the Ankarsrum. The pasta dough was made with the dough roller and scraper. It didn't do a bad job (much better than the KA with dough hook would have done), but the food processor is still the best way to make pasta dough in my opinion. And I confirmed that I don't want to try many of the bread recipes that came with the mixer - their measurements seem to be completely out to lunch! The pasta dough recipe said to use 350 grams or 1.5 cups of durum flour. 1.5 cups was less than 300 grams, so I went with the weight measurement. In that case, the two eggs they recommended was not nearly enough, so I added another egg and a bit of water to get the dough to come together. Never mind, I have lots of bread recipes!

Next, the durum atta flour. I'd never used this before. This is a whole-grain flour from Canadian durum wheat. It's finer than semolina but still a bit gritty with the bran in it. Using it for pasta, I found it to be very, very stretchy but not very strong, so I expect that will hold true when making bread dough as well. The pasta smells divine though; I can hardly wait for dinner! I'm going to put some of the flour through my fine sieve to see what comes out (or stays in), and then start using it in bread. I know some folks on this site have made 'Attamura' bread so maybe I'll try that. The colour and aroma are quite irresistible!