February 23, 2011 - 3:03pm
White rice vs brown rice & using to prevent sticking
I am interested in using rice flour (I just got a Nutrimill) on linen cloths (flour sack tea towel type) to cover my dough when it is rising etc. I was reading where they were saying use brown rice, but I have a LOT of white rice and am wondering if this would work just as well?
Do I simply spray a coating of oil on the cloth and sprinkle it with rice flour? Does it ever need to be washed, or is this something I simply put into a plastic bag till the next time? I know I have read about doing this somewhere, but just can't remember where or how to do it.
Joanne
Share
it all works. You can even use potato flakes or rye flour, crushed flax seeds or bread crumbs. Nut crumbs or flour is tasty too! Oat flakes or chopped pumpkin seeds.
I like a mixture of 1 part white rice to 4 parts AP wheat. When my shaker is empty it may get filled with something else. I got some red rice too! :)
Oil on cloth? nope, keep it simple. I give it a good shake outside before I hang it to dry (oven door) fold it and tuck it into a zipper lock bag.
If it is dry in the house, I use wet, wrung out towels to cover. They get washed after picking off any dried dough.
I've dusted my cloths and baskets with flour, rice flour, semolina, and a mix of rice flour and semolina. (Something totally different from the dough seems to work better.) When I'm done I just shake them out and hang them up, ready to dust again and use again. (I forgot to shake them out once, and hatched a worm!-)
I never wash them and never use oil on them. Oils easily go rancid, make storage more difficult, and often effectively necessitate laundering the cloths. Washing out all the flour (not just what shakes off) removes the flour that's penetrated in between (or even inside) the threads, which is a part of what makes the cloths not stick. (Also, washing means having to use more flour each time, which seems unnecessarily wasteful:-)
The sack of rice flour I've been using says "white rice flour", and it's been working well for me. I can't comment on whether or not brown rice flour works even better, because I haven't had the opportunity to try it myself yet.
Thanks! I was thinking right along those lines, but I know that I had read to spray with oil and it just didn't sound right. Thanks for all the tips, I appreciate that you took the time to answer, and shared such good advice. I will definitely just sprinkle with white rice flour, since I don't really bake with it that makes the most sense.
Joanne