Question about using 100% whole grains from mill
Hello, I am new to the forum and to milling my own flour (got a Grainmaker 99 for Christmas) but I am a very proficient baker, usually I bake more cakes and desserts but occasionally make yeast breads as well. I have begun experimenting using my freshly milled flour in muffins, bread, and cake. I have used hard white spring wheat to completely replace all purpose flour in pound cake and muffins, Kamut to completely replace the whole wheat/hard white wheat to replace the all purpose flour in wheat bread, and today I used soft white winter wheat to make a cake. I used 100% whole grain flour in all these cases and the results were as good as when I made these things before. So now I am confused.
I have read a lot of thread on TFL and it seems everyone cautions on switching to 100% whole wheat and to swap it out gradually because the end product will turn out so differently. In my experience this has not been the case. When I made the wheat bread, it came out even more tender than ever before. So what is the reason for this? Is it because I may be grinding my flour finer than most other mills will grind? I will admit that I have ground it fairly fine.
I almost always use 100% home milled, though I only milled a tiny amount of Kamut. First, there is definitely a difference in hydration required for store bought whole wheat, and that is one reason people suggest to change gradually, so you can adjust the amount of water to add. Second, some suggest that whole wheat ferments and proofs quicker than bread flour or AP, so again that is why they suggest you gradually change over. As to whether you are grinding finer, I doubt that is the issue, I have ground flour finely, and several clicks more coarsely, and have no noticed any difference. If you are finding that the dough rises as much as bread flour, that would be very surprising to me. While I like the texture, and get airly loaves of WW, it is definitely not as light and airy as BF or APP.
Hi Graced, I like your user name. Took me a while to figure it out; very ingenious!
If I understand your post, you are saying that your baked goods consisting of 100% home ground grains are more tender and very similar to your previous breads using commercial flour. Your experience with whole grains is very unusual. I’ve never heard of that experience before. You must be truly Graced by Him! ;-)
The overwhelming reported experience of using 100% whole grains would be more dense, less rise (whole grains are heavier than processed flour), and a more “thirsty” dough. That’s not to say that whole are grains make an inferior loaf. To the contrary home millers crave the health benefits, the chew, and especially the “earthy” flavors.
Most bakers supplement their commercially processed flours with a portion of whole grains.
Let us know more about your experience. I’m interested to know.
Dan
If your whole wheat breads are more tender than AP breads, it makes sense. Whole wheat has weaker gluten.
I have been home milling wheat for ages and my experience is also very contrary to the general consensus here in the forum. I have never found that my home milled wheat flour requires more liquid than store bought white. In fact I find that there is always some water vapor (steam?) present on the sides of my "flour catching pan" after grinding wheat which makes me think that there is moisture in my wheat berries.
I have only recently started working with sourdough - and with sourdough, I definitely notice a big difference in behavior with my home milled wheat vs white. And I've found I'm really partial to sourdough with white AP (the sourdough flavor and chew just is more to my liking). But for bread using commercial yeast, I go 100% home milled hard white wheat and get very soft, flexible and airy loaves.
I will confirm what Barry said about fine grind - I have not noticed any difference (with my commercial yeast WW breads) when I grind super fine vs a few clicks coarser. However if I'm making some types of pasta (ravioli for example) where I want a silky smooth texture, then I grind fine and run it through a fine mesh to screen out the bran and larger bits.
Andy, Actually, I have similar experiences to you concerning hydration. While store bought whole wheat flour does require more water than AP of BF, I have not seen that with home milled, and have no idea why.
> which makes me think that there is moisture in my wheat berries.
Well Andy, that is because there IS water in your wheat berries :-) Probably around 11 - 14% of the total weight is water. It could be more or less depending on your local environment and storage methods.
If you ever want to dig deep and discover the actual water weight, take a measured amount of your wheat berries and weigh it precisely. Spread it out on a cookie sheet and put it into a warm oven - maybe around 200 F. After about an hour pull the berries and weigh them again. The total weigh will likely be less. Make a note and put the berries back in the oven for another half hour or so. Weigh them again. Make a note.
If the weight hasn't changed then you have evaporated all the water out of the berries. If the weight changes bake the berries for another half hour and check again. Eventually the weight won't change. Take the final weight and divide it by the original weight to get the percentage of water trapped in the wheat berries.
One of the heat sources for my home and barn is shelled corn. My biomass furnaces and stoves burn better when you program them correctly - high moisture, low moisture or just plain corn. I use this method to determine the moisture content so that I can program my corn burners effectively.
I live is south Louisiana where the humidity is high. Maybe my flour is soaking up a lot of moisture. I don't think my berries are too dry. But there is a vast difference in hydration between 100% commercial AP flour and 100% Whole Ground Wheat. A huge difference.
It is very obvious when I mix my starters.
I read that Grace is comparing AP Flour to 100% home ground Whole Wheat. Are you guys not seeing any difference in hydration?
Dan
For me, I'm comparing AP (bought at Costco, Miller's Milling in Oakland) with home milled Hard White (Wheat Montana Prairie Gold) and I am not seeing any difference in hydration. (at least not any more than the ordinary day to day adjustments I make due to weather)
Hate to answer a question with a question (or two or three) but....Are you milling your flour just before mixing the dough or do you mill a larger quantity than needed and store the excess? What is the humidity in your home and overall in the area where you live and how much does it vary seasonally? What are the storage conditions for your wheat berries and any excess flour you store? How do they compare to the storage conditions for the flour you purchased once it's on the shelf at home? I have found that seasonal changes have a noticeable effect on hydration for the bread I bake. Right now with the auxiliary heat on all the time in response to unseasonably cold temps I need higher hydration. In addition to seasonal variation there will be differences, sometimes significant, in the type of grain I've milled. None of the variations I've noted come under the heading of "Oh! Wow!" - They're more like "Hmmmm, I might need 20 more grams of water."
Your question was for Grace - but just for comparison sake, here are my answers to your questions:
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area - I don't heat my house so I don't have the effect people get in snow country with the furnace running. And in the summer I don't air condition so I don't get that effect either. It is typically 65% humidity inside my house (reading an inaccurate, cheap-o hydrometer from a cigar humidor - but calibrated with the moist salt method) --- Google tells me it is 82% humidity today (light rain). I think my humidity inside the house stays between 45-65% all year round.
My AP comes in a plastic bag and I seal it up after I measure out the flour. My wheatberries come in the typical 50lb stitched paper bags (wheat Montana - I bring back 5-6 bags at a time when I visit my sister in Bozeman) and I transfer the berries into gallon ziplock bags (fun, fun, fun - but makes it much easier for me to use than storage buckets).
I mill my berries immediately before mixing the dough - I don't store the excess (I weigh before I grind)
I weigh my flour and water -- but I adjust by feel adding a few grams of water if needed.
Gracedbyh1m got me thinking about all the factors that might play into experiences with flours freshly milled or brought home from the store. The ones I asked about were the first to come to mind so thanks for your input AndyPanda. There are some others that occurred to me, too. For example, I brought home some flour mites, tiny little buggers (pun intended), that were hiding in a store bought paper bag of flour. That resulted in a freezer quarantine for all my incoming flour. On reflection, I'm sure that pulled some moisture out of the packaged product by sublimation. My berries of late have arrived in pails that included oxygen absorbers for controlling insect pests. I think they work by oxidizing iron filings which means that they pull in oxygen and moisture to carry out the process. How much I don't know. When I pull out the berries I need I'm sure I reintroduce some O2 and H2O. Again I don't know how much. I do have the impression that hydration for freshly milled flour is, on average, slightly higher that for 'store-boughten'. Fortunately not enough to make me pull out my hair 'cause there ain't that much left. I've been practicing all-natural, non-GMO, fully organic balding for some time now. Now you've got me thinking about what Mark Twain is alleged to have said about the weather in San Francisco - "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."
I bake some with fresh milled, and some with milled , then stored in the freezer, and don't see much of a difference, both use about, more or less, the same water as BF, though the few times I have used store bought WW, it definitely takes more water. My completely unfounded explanation is that is has to do something with the commercial milling process. While at first I thought it might be the humidity in my house, remember that all mills heat up the flour in part as the berries are ground, as Jim points out, heating flour will drive out the moisture. So if anything, I would think that home milled has less moisture coming out of the mill than regular flour stored in the same humidity as the berries. My general practice is to store it in the freezer in a sealed container within 10 to 20 minutes after the grinding is complete, I don't think it is absorbing any moisture in the freezer.
Thanks for all your input guys. Well, I have been using freshly ground flour (I only grind what I need for that morning); I don't store it in the freezer which I am sure would dry it out some. It does make sense to me that store bought WW would need more water. I live in NC and it isn't that dry here usually, even in the winter, so it seems from what everyone has said that it has more to do with the freshness of the flour than anything. I wouldn't say that the things I have made have come out more dense, perhaps a little, but not noticeably. They have been very moist and tender, especially the wheat bread. I definitely haven't noticed less rise at all, even in the cake. I have been very surprised, it isn't what I was expecting!!
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Here is a picture of the honey oatmeal wheat bread I made using freshly milled Prairie Gold wheat in place of the AP and Kamut in place of WW.
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Your bread looks great! Whatever you are doing is working for you.
Your bread looks lovely!
Since you said you had just recently gotten the grinder, I thought I'd mention something that you may or may not already know. I started grinding my own wheat many years ago. I wanted to get fresh wheat germ oil - but if you buy wheat germ oil or wheat germ at the store, it smells and tastes rancid. So the research it did (this was nearly 50 years ago) told me that wheat germ oil will go rancid in 4-5 days after cracking the wheat berry open AND the claim was that it would still go bad even in the freezer (I don't know if this is true or not)
I called all the local mills and they would gladly sell me a 50 pound bag of fresh wheat germ milled that day - but there was no way I could eat 50 pounds of it in 5 days - haha. I once was able to buy a 5 pound bag of wheat germ that was milled that very day (I had to pay FedEx to get it to me overnight - expensive) - and it tasted completely different (sweet and delicious) from bitter and rancid wheat germ sitting on the shelf at a health food store or grocery.
So the only way I could get fresh wheat germ oil was to grind my own wheat and make bread. And I've been baking my wheat bread ever since.
Just thought I'd share that with you --- by home milling your wheat at home you are getting a real super food!