Home Milled with Malt Experiment
As promised I did a test loaf with my home milled high extraction flour. I used .01% of diastatic malt by weight of the flour and baked using my standard "test loaf" formula. Once again, I went by the numbers - strokes, folds, dough temperature, and fermentation times as for my other loaves.
The results of the .01% malt are posted here: http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii183/proth5/Homemilledmalt1.jpg [1]
For comparison a non-malted loaf is posted here: http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii183/proth5/FreshGroundCrumb.jpg [2]
My observation is that except for some minor variations in shaping and slashing, the loaves were pretty much the same. If anything, I would say that the malted loaf rose a bit more and was a bit more lively during shaping, but that might be my imagination. I didn't notice any significant gumminess in the crumb - again, I didn't notice much difference at all. .01% is a very small amount of malt and perhaps I will run a second test with a higher percent in the future.
But for now, I just don't think I need to malt the home milled. It may be that there is a balance within the parts of the grain that are used that tends to compensate for the relatively high Falling Number or just...well, I don't know anymore. Any comments that can shed light on this would be much appreciated.
My next test bake will be home milled that has been aged for 2 months - which is the recommended aging for whole wheat type flours. We'll see if my patience pays off.
Happy Baking!