What Can and Cannot be made with Whole Grains?
I've been using whole white wheat flour for about 4 years now, 2 of which I have been grinding my own hard and soft white wheat flours. Our grinder is excellent and grinds them so fine that I cannot feel any hard "granules", all I feel is soft powderiness, like you would expect from processed storebought flour.
I have made many things with excellent success, such as bagels, cakes, soft and fluffy biscuits, pitas, tortillas, etc. But 2 things I have not been able to make with success is pizza crust that resembles Pizza Hut's in texture, and breads with an excellent (I believe the term is open crumb?) sourdough type breads that have lots of luscious air pockets in them. I have not even expiramented with croissants since I figure they are impossible. But I'm "dying" to try!
But is it impossible to make those, or can I do it with the right recipes and techniques using my home ground whote white wheat flour?
Thank you!
Hi AlaskanShepherdess,
I'm very interested in buying a grinder myself. Can you tell me what model you have? If you sift your flour does it pass completely through the sieve or does the bran remain on the sieve? I'd like to know if the bran is micronized just like the flour.
As for the rest I make my croissants with 25% of wholemeal flour, paying attention to use a strong flour for the remaining 75%.
Thanks.
Hi Nico,
We have a Golden Grain Deluxe Grainder. It is a small company and rather unknown, but we really like the grinder. The only thing we don't like is that it is quite large, and very heavy. When I no longer have access to this grinder (it's my moms) then I plan on buying KoMo mill. I called the Pleasant Grain Company (a distributor) and I questioned the lady as to how fine the flour was, and she said that it is as fine as I described what I get from our grinder.
As for the bran, it kinds of chips off in larger, but not huge flakes. If you look closely at the flour you can definately see the flakes. I would estimate them about the size of ground pepper pieces. Although every now and then there is a piece that is a bit larger.
I haven't ever sifted my flour before, but the flakes are so small that the majority would not be caught in my regular small weave kitchen strainer. A number would be caught in my tea strainer I believe (very fine weave).
By wholemeal do you mean whole grain? And what is strong flour?
it's very clear. Yes, buy wholemeal I mean wholegrain, and to say the truth that whole grain flour is made by 3/4 wheat and 1/4 rye. Strong flour is high gluten flour such as bread flour. Generally it's not reccomended to make croissants only with bread flour, maybe it's better mixing it 50-50 with AP flour.
if you want an airy sourdough, google the Tartine ww bread recipe. I believe it's about 70% whole grain, and even I have had great success getting a holey crumb!
Alaskan, you can definitely make fine pizza crust with whole grains from your grinder. I usually use 1/2 white and 1/2 red wheat berries. If you want to duplicate a particular style, such as Pizza Hut, you might want to go to pizzamaking.com. They have lots of info on different styles - while they don't have a whole wheat pizza hut style, you can use the regular pizza hut recipe and increase the water to make up for using whole wheat instead of bread flour. I just did a search and they have a papa john's wheat, but didn't see a pizza hut wheat.