Most bookmarked

Wheat Tempering

Success begins with perfectly tempered wheat. Tempering consists of adding water to dry grain and allowing the grain to rest for a period of time before it is milled. The purpose of tempering is to toughen the bran and thus make it resist being broken into small particles during milling and to soften or "mellow" the endosperm and make it easier to grind. It also helps obtain bran with lowest possible starch content and flour that has ideal quality and higher extraction.

Temper at 77°F or longer if colder. Cooler temps increase flour output and ash. Hotter temps shorten tempering time and can improve gluten properties. 72 hours is not too long to temper.

For milling it is essential that the tempering water is fully absorbed and evenly distributed in the endosperm. Too short a tempering time results in more granular flour, and more power required to mill. Don't mill cold wheat. Milling cold wheat will tend to cause the bran to shatter and not flake off making it hard to sift off.

Ideal Moisture and Tempering Time

For roller mills

- Spring Wheat: 17.5% / 48 - 72 hrs.
- Hard Wheat: 16.5% / 36 - 48 hrs.
- Soft Wheat: 15.5% / 12 - 24 hrs.
- Durum Wheat: 17.0% / 4 - 12 hrs.

Use lower percentages for other milling methods.

These moisture levels may seem high. These are not necessarily the moisture levels used at commercial mills. They can't sell flour with a moisture level over 14% as it is much more likely to mold, draw insects, and have bacterial problems. This is not and issue for home milling if you are going to use in right away. Try to use your flour within 24 hours of milling.
 
The bite method

What moisture level is the grain you are starting with? No grain moisture meter? No problem. Take a couple grains of your wheat and bite it. The harder the grain is more water it will need to be tempered with. Long ago millers didn't have moisture meters. They used the bite method. Practice and learn the feel of grain. To achieve ideal tempering is to learn to feel and to observe.

How to Temper

Add the desired amount of water to wheat cover container and shake until water is dispersed and for 10 seconds every minute for 5 minutes. Don't add more that 5% per day. Temper at 77°F for 2 to 3 days. If your temperature is much lower than 77°F add a day.

Milling

Warning! Protect your mill. Don't grind any grain in your mill you are not comfortable with. You know your mill better then I do. Grind at your own risk.

I used Wheat Montana Hard Red Spring Wheat for the milling tests.

Impact Mills

Every one says don't temper wheat for impact mills, but I have used my impact mill with estimated moisture of 14% and it worked great. About 9% of the bran was large and sifted out easily. I also tried 20% moisture in the impact mill and I think it was too high but it didn't ruin the mill and was not hard to clean up. It also had large bran but not an improvement over the lower moisture batch.

Bur Mills

The Kitchen Aid Grain Mill (KAGM) worked well but not as well as the impact mill. It has very limited ability to grind fine.

Stone Mills

The Wonder Junior Mill is hand cranked and it is easier to mill if the wheat is tempered. It works well at 13% to 15% moisture. I ran 20% through it and it glazed the stones. They were easy to clean with water and then let dry.

Bolted Flour aka High Extraction Flour

Bolted flour contains almost all of the germ, and the softer parts of the bran. Bolted flour was historically sifted through a piece of cloth. It is now typically sifted through a metal or plastic screen. The higher the percentage the closer to whole grain flour it is. The total flour out of the sifter divided by the total grain in to the mill would give you the extraction percentage. 100% extraction is whole wheat.

Home grinding and bolting wheat will get flavor that can't be beat.

History of flour bolting http://www.angelfire.com/journal/millbuilder/boulting.html

After grinding sift your flour through a sieve. I have a 55 mesh I got here. http://www.fantes.com/sifters-shakers.html also a 30 mesh I have had for years. Using a magnifying glass helps to inspect your work.

I have been tempering 10% moisture HRS wheat to 15% moisture by adding 50g of water to 1000g of wheat and putting it in my 80 °F proof box for 3 days. Grind the wheat in my impact mill on fine. Sift through a 30 mesh sieve and remove about 9% pure bran. Sift through a 55 mesh sieve and save the 74% very white flour. Take the middlings that were caught by the 55mesh sieve and look at them under a magnifying glass. You will see small flat brown bran and small roundish sand looking endosperm. Run this through a stone mill and sieve through the 55 mesh. Stone mill and sieve one more time. Discard the bran. You should have 84% to 88% extraction flour. I have been using about 65% hydration with this flour. It tastes wonderful.

 Greg R

I baked gingerbread for the first time last night. Yum.

I was amazed at how good the house smelled when I came home from work today. It really smells festive, like the holidays are here, even 24 hours after baking it.

I looked at a few different recipes before settling on something closest to the recipe from the Joy of Cooking.

Gingerbread Makes 1 large or 3 small loaves

1 3/4 cups all-purpose unbleached flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt (can be omitted if using salted butter)
1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter
1 egg
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup molasses
1/2 cup warm water
3 tablespoons crystalized ginger, 1/2 cup raisins or other dried fruit (optional)

Preheat oven to 350.

Combine the butter, egg, brown sugar, and molasses in a bowl and stir until combined. Mix in the dry ingredients, then add hot water and stir until just combined.

Pour batter into greased baking pans. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, between 30 and 50 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for at least 10 minutes before removing from the pan.

As I write this, we’re in the midst of the Covid-19 Pandemic and many of us are home baking bread. Whereas a few short months ago large numbers of us were focused on “The Perfect Loaf”, now we are happy to be able to bake our own nutritious sandwich bread for utilitarian purposes.

I have become hooked on Covered Pullman Pans. By the way (at this time), Amazon has a great deal on 2 large covered Pullman Pans. Anyway, in an effort to simplify and streamline the sandwich bread I wondered if the dough could be shaped immediately after mixing and then placed in the Pullman to BF and later bake. I supposed that the pan would constrain the dough from spreading so shaping might be done at the beginning of fermentation rather than towards the end after the BF. With typical free formed loaves the dough is pre-shaped and shaped after the BF in order to build structure and strength back into the slackened dough. With SD many bakers are careful to maintain as much of the gas created during the BF as possible. With the method above the dough is never touched again after the initial mix, so maximum gas retention would be expected.

For those contemplating baking in a large Covered Pullman (13x4x4”), this 70/25% (WW/BF) used a total dough weight of 1550. I didn’t weight the actual dough before panning but it started out at 1550g. When determining your dough weight for a covered Pullman you need to consider the type of flours used. Obviously whole wheat will require more dough than and all white flour dough.

How to calculate Total Dough Weight (TDW) for a different sized pan. This method should at least get you in the ball park.
Since we know that this formula at 1550 fills a larger (13x4x4”) pan and bakes up well, we can easily calculate the cubic inches of the pan and determine how much dough will be needed to fill a pan of a different size.

It is important to note that different doughs with produce different crumb structure and densities. A light and airy all white flour formula may only take 1200 grams to fill a large Pullman. Experimentation is needed to dial in your particular dough. It is probable best to guess a lower weight of total dough and proof and bake with the top off initially. 

An example -

• 13*4*4=208 cubic inches.
• 1550g of dough is needed for 208 cubic inches. For each cubic inch 7.45g of dough is needed.
• the smaller USA Pullman is 9x4x4” and that equals 9*4*4=144 cubic inches.
• Since the smaller pan is 144 cubic inches, it will require 1073g of dough (144*7.45=1072.8)

For an even more accurate method of converting Total Dough Weight for a different sized pan.
The beauty of grams (weight) and milliliters (volume) is that 1 gram of water is equal to 1 milliliter.

• Put your pan on the scale and tare it out
• fill the pan with water and record the weight in grams. If the pan leaks try lining with plastic wrap
• Weigh your next pan as above
• Divide the two weights as shown above using the same math

Since many bakers use USA Pans here are the milliliter weights for the small and large Pullman pans -
Large USA Pullman          3185
Small USA Pullman          2266
(9x5x3") USA Bread Pan  1460
NOTE - I like the Pullman pans much better because they are both 4" high and the Bread Pan is only 3" high.

I am dangerously close to the end of my frozen bread stash. The dough above was thrown together in “Easy Peasy” fashion. I figured if it baked up a brick, I’d eat it anyway :D Thank God! That wasn’t the case.

This large loaf produced 36 thin slices. They will be frozen individually and uncovered for ~1 hr on a cooling rack, then separated and placed back in the freezer in a ZipLok for our supply of daily bread.

I may never again bake pan breads any other way.

Dan