June 14, 2009 - 5:42am
Okay, first dumb question
of the day. Is White Whole Wheat flour bleached? If not how is it made? If it is how can it be called organic if there are chemicals in there?
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of the day. Is White Whole Wheat flour bleached? If not how is it made? If it is how can it be called organic if there are chemicals in there?
White whole wheat flour is made from a white wheat, whereas "traditional" whole wheat flour (as the folks at King Arthur Flour refer to it) is made from a red wheat. The red wheat contains additional pigments, primarily tannins, which also give it more flavor. Some people perceive the flour made from red wheat as bitter or grassy, so they prefer the milder flavor of flour made from white wheat.
Both are good (depending on your tastes) and both are good for you. Neither has been bleached and neither has been altered by additional chemicals.
If you would like additional information on this or other topics, you can click on the Handbook link at the top of the page, or use the Search function at the top of the left-hand bar. The first will give you a concise discussion of a number of bread-baking topics. The second will return any post from the site's inception that contains the word(s) in your search. If those don't address your questions, then by all means, ask away. Somebody, probably a lot of somebodies, will jump in to help.
Paul
I kept seeing it referred to, but never an explanation. Can't wait to try it, I agree with the bitter taste, that's the only problem I have found with ww flour.
This is the greatest site on the web, no exceptions.
Carol
Your question was, "Is White Whole Wheat flour bleached? ". The short answer is yes and no. I believe Paul's remarks are specific to King Arthur WW flour, however, if you're using flour from another source, it may be bleached or unbleached. You've got to read the label to be sure. That said, it is not a sin to use bleached flour, even bleached AP flour, but the results (still pretty good tasting bread) will be somewhat less spectacular than if you use an unbleached bread flour.
since I haven't seen but a fraction of the white whole wheat flours in the marketplace. I can say that all of the white whole wheat flour that I have seen so far has been milled from white wheats, rather than being a bleached version of a whole wheat flour milled from red wheats. In addition to the KA brand, I'm also acquainted with the Wheat Montana brand's Prairie Gold white whole wheat flour.
Even though the lighting isn't wonderful in the photo in this link, you can see that the Prairie Gold white wheat in the hopper on the right-hand side is lighter in color than the Bronze Chief red wheat in the hopper on the left-hand side. Hence, no need for bleaching.
Whether any other millers resort to bleaching red whole wheat flours to be able to market it as white whole wheat, I don't know.
Paul
Thanks for the link, Paul. I've never seen that set-up in any of our local stores and I'll make it a point to check with some of them to see if it might be possible to create such a service in our region.