Gold 'n White Flour - high extraction?
So I just bought a 25# bag of Gold 'n White flour from our local farmer's market on the advice of the grain gurus there. I wanted a whole wheat flour or flour blend that was good for all-purpose baking. Not so high protein to be horrible in baked goods, but not so low to be useless in bread. They directed me to the Gold 'n White, which apparently has 90% of the bran removed (so presumably good for bread -- very little sharp bran pieces to slice through the gluten), is organic (yay!), and stone ground (double yay!). If I understand properly, this would be considered high extraction flour? The germ and all is still there, perhaps with a little loss, just 90% of the bran is gone. Flour is flour and I'll use it for something, just wanted to know what I had on my hands. :)
A person at our market uses gold n' white in her breads. Her breads don't rise very high and dry out quickly. From what I understand from her this is a more all purpose flour and has lower protein than a bread flour would.
I have never understood why people say that bran is bad for bread baking. I grind my own fresh flour and make dozens of loaves of whole wheat bread each week and the loaves are nice and high and soft.
Thank you for the response! All-purpose flour has plenty of uses in our house anyway. It's nice to know if I make some cinnamon buns (I assume this would be an ok flour for those, even though they're yeasted, since they don't really need a hefty rise, and they wouldn't last long anyway! LOL) that they'd be made of a healthier flour. I think I'll still try it with bread, maybe with stuff I know will be eaten quickly, like dinner rolls, just to see how it feels for me. But I really do appreciate the been-there-done-that information. If it doesn't work as bread flour for me, I won't be surprised. :)
I regularly use Gold 'n White flour in place of AP flour and find it to be a great product with regard to taste and performance. Additionally this is an organic product and that is something that is not always easy to find. Measuring by weight rather than volume is more important here than it might be with most white(ish) flours as Gold 'n White is a bit denser than most.
Jeff
So the package's instructions to use up to a quarter less than you would with normal AP flour is correct, in your experience?
It's good to know this performs well as an AP flour, though, even if I won't be able to use it as bread flour. It's nutritionally better than white flour, it's organic like you said, and it's stone-ground. It's a big step up in my mind. And it's fairly cheap. Yay, cheap! LOL
"So the package's instructions to use up to a quarter less than you would with normal AP flour is correct, in your experience?"
I would have to assume that this is very close but I do everything by weight so I really do not have experience with simply reducing the volume.
Jeff
My scale is broken (extreme sadness!!!) so I'm relying on volume at the moment. I'll start all recipes with 3/4 of the flour, and work my way up if necessary, then. Appreciate the answer!