Bakery Bits UK
I recently stumbled across the UK Bakery Bits website. This site has many flours and malts that I have not seen for sale in the US. For example, there are flaked and kibbled malted wheat, three different roasted barley malt flours (light, medium, and dark), several malt-flour blends, and unusual heritage flours. They also have einkorn, emmer, several ryes, spelt, etc., that are more available in the US.
I am interested in using many of these ingredients, but as you can guess, the shipping from the UK to the US is prohibitive. King Arthur has the malted wheat flakes but are much more expensive than Bakery Bits. Red Star (Lesaffre), Briess Malt & Ingredients, and Muntons Malted Ingredients (US) have malted wheat flakes but do not sell retail. Briess and Muntons also produce the roasted barley malt flours. I have been unable to locate a retail source for the malt flours, although I have seen some sprouted flours for sale. I have two questions:
- Are there any other US retail distributors of these malted products?
- Could I use some products from the homebrewing store as a substitute? There are many brewing stores online and there is a physical store not too far from me.
Thanks!
Everything that you see there, you can get in the US
Their malt flours or kibbles are simply finely or coarsely ground malt, this one, for example
https://www.homebrewohio.com/muntons-wheat-malt/
Muntons barley malts
https://www.homebrewohio.com/beer/grain/muntons/
Flaked
https://www.homebrewohio.com/briess-flaked-barley/
https://www.homebrewohio.com/briess-flaked-rye/
Etc, etc, etc.
You can make your own in any amounts needed for home baking in a blender, food processor or coffee grinder.
Not all of those items you mention are equivalent. The wheat and barley flakes are similar to rolled oats; they have not been malted.
I do have some questions about the brewing ingredients. Do you know if the brewer's wheat malt has had the same level of kilning as the product from Bakery Bits or King Arthur? There are several wheat malts available—some diastatic and some non-diastatic. Also, the barley malts are generally not hulled. Will it be possible to grind the barley and sift out the hulls?
Thanks!
Breweries also pay attention to the diastatic power of their malts, so it's indicated for each malt that they sell. It varies greatly, of course.
KAF doesn't indicate the precise diastatic power of their malts that they sell online, so it's impossible to compare. They just broadly state that one of them is diastatic and the other one isn't. In baking we add so little malt and our flour is so strong anyways that the variation in diastatic power is not that significant to us. For us it is enough to know that one is relatively low and another one is relatively high.
Bakery Bits indicates specifically which brewer's malt they sell, so it is easy to check out its diastatic power on the manufacturer's website.
Malted grain flakes are also available in the US should one need them.
https://shop.kingarthurbaking.com/items/malted-wheat-flakes-2-lb
About husks, unhulled malt... Well, if we are interested in unhulled stuff, it is easier to buy dry malt or dry malt extract in powdered form. We don't add too much of that stuff to bread flour anyway. Stil, there is such thing as spent grain baking, where up to 10% of all flour is replaced by the spent grain, whole barley malt with husks. Unmilled. Wet or dried. The resulting bread or pastry is still tasty and pleasant to eat, doesn't hurt your mouth or your insides later on.
Examples of spent grain baking:
https://brooklynbrewshop.com/blogs/themash/tagged/spent-grain-chef?sscid=31k5_pi8yb&
Even the liquid from presoaking whole unhulled malt could be used in baking to our advantage, it has different flavors and a surprizingly low pH depending on the soaking method:
https://byo.com/article/soaking-grains-layout/
I would simply mill, grind or break down the whole shebang with husks into semola or semolina rimacinata sized pieces and stay within 10% limit.
There's no reason to buy barley malt - wheat and rye can be just as strong, are sold hulled, and don't cost much more.
Thank you for the suggestions @mariana and @suave. It looks like I need to pay a visit to the homebrew store.