Same bread-differnt whole wheat variety-totally different flavor
I made my favorite breakfast bread yesterday that I make every weekend. We eat it every morning and it is a WW,cardamom,craisin,golden raisin,walnut bread. I developed the recipe last year and it has eveloved a bit.I usually make this with about 3 cups of flour-1/3 hard red spring wheat,1/3 kamut,1/3 AP but the evolving part is this-over the last 6 months it has become almost totally hard red spring wheat with just a little AP. It is very delicious and fresh grass-like in flavor, as the red spring wheat flour always is.
Well, this weekend, I only had Kamut and Hard white winter wheat flour available so I proceeded to make the loaf with that. WHAT A DIFFERENCE! It is still mostly WW but the grasslike flavor is gone. White wheat is indeed a very bland tasting wheat and while Kamut usually has a slightly nutty flavor, it wasn't too apparent. The loaves were delicious, but totally different.The crumb/texture was as usualbut the flavor notes of the cardamom almost disappear in this loaf. I would have thought they would be more apparent in the blandness but they were not.I also thought it needed more...something-salt? Increased spice?. I think any bread made with white winter wheat needs other ingredients to create a flavor in a loaf-even if the flour is fresh ground. I will have to remember that in the future.
So now I totally appreciate the flavor difference between wheat varieties and how it impacts on a recipe.