March 14, 2020 - 7:08am
Home-miller needs help
I have baked bread for many years. I have favorite recipes and they all come out very well.
I purchased a Komo XL and am experimenting with baking with my own flour now. I am not baking sourdough, just your regular whole wheat from white or red wheat grain.
I use the same proportions as I always did, however, the dough comes out too sticky. I am trying to understand if using my own flour requires less water or more flour?
It also comes out flat after baking, but the taste is great as usual.
Would appreciate some help. Thank you
Share
I have been told by people who grind their own whole wheat that they are never sure of the best hydration for each variety of wheat until they try it.
So try a little less water than you are used to, use your best pre-shaping and shaping techniques to get as much tension as you can, and try baking in a dutch oven/cloche for maximum steam.
Saphira, Change the title of your post to: "Home-miller needs help" and several other of the home-millers will chime in.
I home mill, and this is what I have learned:
When you say it comes out flat after baking, do you mean there was no oven spring? If so, then it was likely over-fermented, so reduce the amount of yeast or reduce rise time.
I'm sure others will chime in too.
Saphira,
First, congrats on the mill, it is a nice one. I was listening to a podcast by Nicole Muvundamina , and she said that the natural progression was baking your own bread with commercial yeast, then changing over to sourdough starters, then becoming a home miller, then looking into growing your own wheat ( she was just joking about the last part ) But you are definitely on the far end of the curve.
Most suggest that you don't dive into the deep end, and instead, take your normal bread flour recipe, and substitute 20% WW, then adjust the timing and hydration so that the dough feels similar to the 100% bread flour. Next time increase by another 20%, and again make adjustments, and notes, and continue until you get to 100%. I would be lying if I said I did that, but that approach does seem to make sense.
As Louis says, WW will not rise as high as white flour, though the taste more than makes up for that, IMO. When you say flat, it would help to see photos and a description of your process. Again, Louis is right on the money when he says that if ferments faster than white flour, so it is possible it was overproofed. The finger poke test has never worked for me, but if you are not getting any oven spring at all, that is a good sign of a problem, such as overproofing.
As to being sticky, I autolyse for 40 minutes or longer. If at the end of that time it is pretty sticky, then yes, the hydration is probably too high for that flour, so reduce the water next time.
Hope you enjoy your mill.
@Barryvabeach and @idaveindy Thank you both for replying. I learned from your answers more that from doing google searches for several days.
I am very grateful for your help.
Now I understand that I need to learn to autolyze, make my own starter and adjust my proportions.
I posted some pictures as I couldn't figure out how to include them in my post.
Any ideas on the source for spring hard white wheat? I am on the east coast. Thank you
Saphira, for hard white wheat, your local supplier will likely either have winter or spring. My local supplier offers winter white. I did find prairie gold spring white recently, but I had to bulk order from allbulkfoods.com though you might want to check and see if there is a dutchvalleysfood location near you. https://www.dutchvalleyfoods.com/, or a Latter Day Saints coop near you. For your loaf, it does not look terrible to me, did you form it in a couche?
Thank you. No by hand and baked in one of those baguette pans.
prairie gold spring white=hard spring wheat?
there is no dutchvalleysfood location near me and no Latter Day Saints coop at all. I am on the east coast.
Thank you
Yes, fresh milled whole wheat has all the bran in it which has most of the minerals. More minerals promotes yeast activity and, thus, a faster fermentation. Bran also absorbs more water than endosperm so you generally need to increase your hydration when compared to white flour. Handling properties and your overall rise could also change based on your grind. Are you going to the finest grind possible (where you vaguely hear the stones touching when the Komo is turned on)? Lastly, keep in mind that your fresh milled grain has no malt in it. I generally add 1% diastatic malt to my whole wheat formulations. Autolyse is a great tip as well.
Lastly, when I do 100% whole grain bread, I usually add vital wheat gluten to help improve the crumb. I just made a sourdough with white hard spring wheat and rye I can share the formula if you want to see my proportions.
Zuri
yes, please share.
I used 1/4 cup vital wheat gluten for 3.5 cups of milled flour.
"I generally add 1% diastatic malt to my whole wheat formulations"
would you please share the source?
Saphira, yes, I believe Prairie Gold hard white wheat is a spring wheat. I am on the east coast, and bought from allbulkfoods- if you buy in large quantities , the pricing including shipping was not bad. If you just want to try a hard white wheat, you might want to check at a Whole Foods near you and see what they have. Another option is organic food stores - there is one only a few miles from me, you have to special order by the 25 pound bag, they have red hard spring, and winter hard white , both from Central Milling , but no spring hard white.
You mean what is my source for D-malt?
yes, where do you get it? I can't find it in local stores (if I need it at all, not sure yet)
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0721KWQFG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Thank you
Everyone's ingredients/situation are different, but.... 1/4 cup VWG per 3.5 cups flour may be on the high side. Hodgson Mill recommended 1 tsp VWG per cup of flour. You use 12 tsp (1/4 cup) per 3.5 cups, versus 3.5 tsp.
That might be the source of the extra stickiness.
I also found that diastatic malt made my whole wheat dough ferment too fast, so I stopped using it. But then I also use, what seems to me, a powerful starter.
My soak/autolyse seems to create enough sugars for a fast ferment, so I stopped adding diastatic malt and sugar to the dough.
Recently, I've also been using hard white spring wheat and Kamut wheat that is from the 2017 harvest, (Kamut might be 2018, but it is not dated) so it is not the freshest. I do not know if that increases or decreases fermentation rate, compared to wheat that is less than a year old.
--
Also check CLNF.org for whole berry Prairie Gold, Bronze Chief (hard red spring), organic rye berries, oat groats, and Kamut (Khorasan) wheat. The cleanest, least damaged, least defective wheat I've ever bought has been Kamut from CLNF.org. Second best has been Prairie Gold from CLNF.
--
Also, if you buy at Whole foods, buy only a couple pounds at first, and take it home and closely inspect it. I was not satisfied with some hard red winter berries that I recently purchased. I hand-sorted it, and it was in the upper end of Grade 2 (Grade 1 is the best grade), based on the number of defective and damaged kernals. It also seemed like it had absorbed too much moisture. It wasn't wet or anything, but it threw off my hydration %. Or, maybe my other wheat has been too dry all along.
I didn't buy my grain from WF. the source is palousebrend.com. I got 5 lbs bags of hard white and hard red wheat to try out. I was looking to buy a big bag from http://pleasanthillgrain.com but they don't have spring only winter. So I am going to go with your recomendation for CLNF.
Interesting that you say 1 teaspoon on vital wheat gluten, when I first did my research for it, I always saw 1 tablespoon, so only 1/2 tablespoon over the recommended proportion. I will look into it again. I always baked with Bob's red mill whole wheat and those came out beautifully. I did change the yeast recently and since this is active dry vs instant before, I increased the quantity. Will go back to prior proportion regardless of kind of yeast. Which one more time tells me that I need to learn how to do my own starter.
I baked using Bob's red mill recipe slightly modified to work for me:
1.5 cups water room temp
2 tbsp veg oil
2 tbsp honey
3.5 cups flour
1/4 cup dry milk powder
1.5 tsp sea salt
1 tbsp active dry yeast
3.5 tbsp vital wheat gluten.
Dough cycle in the breadmaker, punch down, shape and into the oven for proofing (my oven has that setting) 50 minutes. then score and into the steam oven on a baguette form that has lots of small holes in it for 35 minutes. My steam oven is Wolf and does 10 minutes steam at 210F then bake 25 minutes.
Any bread I tried, it came out beautifully. I have been baking for more than 20 years, Started with just the bread machine and gradually became bolder and decided to now mill my own too.
I will dial down yeast and reduce rising time too.
Thank you for all the info and help. I really appreciate it.
Also, you're probably already doing this, but just in case you are not, when home milling, it's best to weigh your flour and water, not go by volume measurement.
Because the particle size of home milled flour is, generally, not going to match that of commercial flour, a cup of store-bought whole wheat flour will not weigh the same as a cup of home milled flour.
If you are not weighing, you may have to convert your store-bought whole-wheat flour recipe to weights first. IE, how much does 3.5 cups of your store-bought whole wheat flour weigh? Then weigh out that much home-milled flour, and go from there.
And, just to cover all the bases... I assume your store-bought flour, before you bought the mill, was also whole-wheat. Is that correct? (Excuse me for asking. But I ask because some bakers mistakenly think that whole wheat can be directly and evenly substituted for commercial white flour.) If you are going from white flour to whole wheat (home milled), then we need to help you get new recipes, or else do it gradually (20%, 40%, etc., as you make adjustments) as barry mentioned above,
Oh, I was resisting that! I know I should go by weight, but cups are so convenient. Thank you for pointing it out. very much appreciate it. "resistance is futile". I should know better.
Yes, store bought was Bob's red mill whole wheat.
And please share your favorite all whole wheat recipe. I am always looking for good things. Thank you
Would someone please tell me how?
And starter. Anyone has a good recipe/instructions for me to try? Please
Thank you
Just mix your water and flour, let it sit covered for 30 minutes, then add the salt. The 30 minute rest is the autolyse.
Easy starter: https://youtu.be/SuU0xmqEZyI
Saphira, you are getting plenty of good advice, though I am going to pile on and agree with idaveindy - you want to start measuring by weight. Not only is it more precise, it actually is quicker for most recipes ( though admittedly, it is not that great for small amount like teaspoons and tablespoons)
For a typical lean recipe that I use, which calls for flour, water, starter and salt, I use a digital scale, which are pretty cheap, and put the mixer bowl on the scale, tare it to 0, add the flour to the desired amount, tare to 0, add the desired weight of water, then mix to start autolyse. When that is done, turn the scale back on and add the desired weight of starter, then take the bowl off the scale and rest a small plastic container on the top ( or add a top to the bowl and rest a small plastic container on the top of that ) zero out, and then add the desired weight of the salt to the container, once the amount is right, put that into the bowl and start mixing. I did not spend any time looking for measuring cups, or cleaning them. Chefsteps did a video of two attempts at making a recipe, I think it was a cake, one using cups and one using a scale, and the scale was faster. BTW, I use a container for the salt, because if I put in too much into the bowl, it is hard to take some out. With the other ingredients, it is easy to separate if you over pour.
thank you. great advice!
thank you
sorry. dupe
This is what my white (not whole wheat) based on 2 cups looks like. The whole wheat would look exactly the same. White flour is store bought King Arthur bread flour and whole wheat would be store bought Bob's red mill whole wheat flour. (we just didn't want whole wheat today)