Course ground whole wheat needs less water than fine ground?
This is a puzzle. I usually bake with my grocery store's generic whole wheat flour (shur fine). This is a very fine ground flour. It's done well following recipes in Laurel's bread, but it's next to impossible to encorporate the flour into my desem starter (50% hydration). Lately, I discovered a super course ground whole wheat flour cheap at the local adventist store. It's got enormous chunks of bran in it. The bran is fairly light colored, so it might be white wheat. The puzzle is that it needs much, much, less water to get the same dough consistancy. Like, 70% hydration dough spreads a lot in proofing. I had no problem feeding starter at 50% hydration with it.
I thought course ground flour was usually thirstier. I'm not finding it difficult to develop gluten (although it's obviously interrupted by the big chunks of bran), so I don't think it's low gluten. I'm trying to figure out why it behaves so differently than I expect.