August 23, 2011 - 4:34pm
Today's 00 flour/semolina loaf -- too pretty not to take pics
Todays' bread: 550g 00 pizzeria flour, 50g semolina, 12g salt, 9g yeast, 420g water. Painted with olive oil and dusted with Tuscan spice mix, sea salt, and semolina before being baked in an oven heated to 450F then turned down to 400F for 40 minutes. Tastes as good as it looks. Ahhhh.
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OOoh your loaf looks just perfect. I would love a piece with a little olive oil on the side please. :)
Well done! NancyB
Nice baking! I should be receiving my first ever order of 00 flour before this weekend and I am so excited to try it out. Nice baking.
Syd
Syd, the first time I made dough with 00 flour the wonderful feel of it just blew me away. Enjoy!!
beautiful bread!
Stan
No, I haven't opened any of the new flours yet. This was finishing off the last shipment. The next loaf will probably be a loaf made using the same formula but with the first clear flour so I will learn about the taste of first clear which several folks here on TFL say is unique.
just be aware that first clear is what remains after the patent flour (all that gorgeous white stuff we use for breads, etc.) has been sifted out. It represents the outer parts of the wheat kernel minus the bran, so it's lower in starch than patent flours and higher in fat, fiber and protein, but the protein is of lower quality than the gluten-forming proteins found in patent flours. Also, since raw clear flour is typically much darker than patent flours, it's always bleached, for both cosmetic reasons and also to improve gluten formation.
So long story short, bread made with first clear is going to have a stronger taste, chewier crumb and darker color. That's why it's preferred in rye breads.
Let us know how your first-clear bread turns out.
Stan
Hi, Stan.
FYI, before I sourced "real" high-extraction flour, I made dozens of miches with 100% First Clear Flour. These included the one in BBA, Hamelman/McGuire's "Miche, Pointe-a-Calliere" and the miche from Leader's "Local Breads." First clear flour does result in a distinctive flavor - different from any other flour. I rather liked it. The high ash content makes it a good meal for sourdough beasties and results in a pleasantly tangy bread.
If you go back 3 years or so in my blog, you will find multiple examples.
David
I have a 100% first clear, 70% water, 1.5% yeast, 2% salt dough going through the stretch and fold cycles as we speak. I'll let you all know how it works out. I did notice the rich smell of the 1st clear. Almost a whole wheat smell but not.
My dear late friend Julie, who initially taught me how to make bread years ago, swore by Bernard Clayton's book and the idea that the flour really didn't matter much. She bought the cheapest AP flour at the grocery store and made pretty good bread out of it. Her reading of Clayton was that this was his instruction. Turns out, she was wrong. Flour makes a huge difference. Yes, you can make a loaf of good bread out of cheap grocery AP flour but the taste will have to come from other ingredients like milk, sugar, and egg. Just as whole wheat flour tastes different from rye flour, so white flours made from different wheats and/or ground to different consistencies result in breads that taste different from each other.
I got converted to the Cult of Fancy Flour by accident. Earlier in the summer, a young army chaplain friend being deployed (for the third time!) to the Middle East emptied her pantry contents into mine. Among other things was a little red bag of Caputo 00 flour so I made a loaf of bread with it. The dough was silky. The bread was wonderfully chewy and tasted like the breads that came from Italian bakeries in my childhood. You don't have to hit me over the head twice. Flour does make a difference.
So, does that mean I've converted to 00 for everything? Heck, no. Different flours for different breads. Right now, having just received a shipment from Stan at NYBakers.com, I have 17 different kinds of flour in the house, including some grocery store AP. Some are from the grocery store, some are from Stan, some are from Berry Farms in Ohio, some are from MySpiceSage in the bronx, and some are from the local hippy healthy grocery store's bins. They come and go as I get a hankering for different kinds of bread.
My anadama lemon rye bread has so many things in it competing for flavor (e.g. lemon zest, molasses, rye, wholewheat, etc.) that there's no sense using anything but grocery store white flour, whole wheat flour, and hippy store rye. But the 00/semolina bread above had just the standard 4 ingredients: water, flour, yeast and salt in the dough. It showcased the 00 pizza flour and semolina.
When I finally break down and make hubby some Michigan-style salt-rising bread (which toasted smells like the inside of a gym bag), trust me, it'll be made from cheap flour.