Arva flour problems - pale crust
Hey all,
Not sure how many Canadians frequent this site (though I know there are some!), but this might be a more general question anyway. I recently bought a bag of Arva Unbleached White Hard Wheat Flour to use for bread, and it seems as though it's resulting in loaves that barely brown at all. Is there anything else that could be causing this? I used it in two or three different recipes, one sourdough and the others not, and all resulted in pale, pale breads. They weren't terrible aside from that, but it's definitely not right.
To put things in some perspective, I just previously made a sourdough loaf (Nancy Silverton's standard white sourdough) in which, as I recall, I used half of the Arva flour and half of what seems like a really nice red fife flour, and the crust was the most beautiful (deep red-brown) I've yet achieved.
Aside from the fact that I've been using different recipes, the other variables are the same (same crappy oven, etc). I've also been experimenting in all cases with a new homemade flowerpot cloche.
Thoughts?