June 7, 2017 - 4:41am
This might be a very stupid question
Please excuse my ignorance.
Can you make bread from pre-cooked (or par boiled and then dried) wholegrain durum wheat? And if you can will you get the same end product?
Someone has asked if they can purchase durum berries for grinding at home and while trying to help them I can only find precooked whole berries.
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The cooking would get rid of all the wild yeast and other microorganisms that might have been on the berries. This would prevent the flour from being used to create a starter (though it's not likely that anyone would want to try to do this). There is also the potential for protein denaturation depending on how long the berries were parboled which might lead to gluten impairment.
If it's not a big cost investment, it will make for an interesting experiment. If there is limited rise in the dough you know that this is a result of the heat processing step.
Experiment would not be mine (although now you mention it...) and as far as I know it's not to make a starter from just to use as the flour.
I'll pass on your advice.
the enzymes in the resulting flour. No amylase would mean that there would only be starch and no sugars for the wee beasties to eat or protease to break the rubber band gluten bonds down, You could always add malt to the flour and cure those problems so that is what i would do.
and from what you say (or my understanding) par boiled would be better than fully cooked. I suppose using par boiled, 20% bread flour and adding some malt will all help produce a good bread.
Thank you Dabrownman. I shall pass on your advice. Or even try it myself.
and are pretty much toast at 170 F long before any boiling temperature. I would add 6 tenths to 1%malt to replace the enzymes lost in oar boiling process.
You should follow up on this article from a couple of years ago to see if they were successful growing durum in Suffolk. Maybe you could get a sack or two directly from the farmer! I'm lucky enough here on Vancouver Island to have access to a small outfit (Vancouver Island Grain and Milling) that sends a truck around the Western provinces, buying all kinds of grain from organic farmers and then distributing it through a small, informal network twice a year.
If the wheat has been cooked, not only will the enzymes be denatured but so will the proteins. And the starch, presumably, will be pre-gelled as well. In other words, I wouldn't expect it to provide much for structure in the dough; especially since durum isn't known for its gluten-forming prowess even before it is cooked.
I'd be tempted to treat it as if it were oat flour or some other GF flour and keep the quantity below 20% of the flour for a first run. That should provide some hints about its behavior and a notion of whether the amount should be decreased or increased.
Paul