February 22, 2010 - 4:32pm
White bread flour with germ: What is this?
Hi,
I picked up a bag of flour the other day, but instead of getting regular (white) bread flour I got white bread flour with germ. (The brand is Mountain Path. They're a small mill in Ontario. I'm quite fond of their whole wheat flours!) It looks like regular bread flour, but slightly darker. I'm guessing this is flour that's just had the bran sifted out (leaving the endosperm and germ). What I'm really wondering is, what should I do with this flour? Can I substitute it in place of regular bread flour? Are there any types of bread it might be particularly suited to?
Thanks!
Paul
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White whole wheat flour is slowly gaining acceptance here in the US. There was quite a bit of research done on the grain at Kansas State University in the late 70s. It is becoming more broadly available for domestic use. King Arthur Flour touts it in their catalog and at their website. It is also available as a house brand flour at the local Kroger affiliate supermarket. I could be wrong but I think I've read that WWW is also available in Australia.
The WWW I've seen and used is more similar to whole wheat than to bread flour.
Most likely that this is white flour with an addition of the wheat germ , we used to make a loaf of this it was marketed as vitamin E enriched it was quite popular and had a good following. I was always told that wheat germ could have a deleterious effect on the dough however i found that it seemed to give a kick like a mule, it was a bit unpredictable in that respect but it did have quite a nice nutty flavour and produced wonderfull toast .
regards yozza
I'm pretty sure this is what it is (white flour + germ as opposed to white whole wheat). I tried subtituting it for regular white flour in a NYT style no knead last night, but it gave a fairly dense loaf, although with a very nice flavour. (I think the problem was that it takes more water to hydrate this flour than a regular white flour, so if I try this again I'll go for a higher hydration.)
Thanks for the replies! As for white whole wheat, I've been looking around for some, because I've heard a lot about this and would love to try it, but haven't come across it yet.