Golden Miche
Today's bake is a miche made with home milled high extraction flour. I have been working on this for awhile, but ran into some problems with overheating the flour while milling, which led to some notable failures. Today, I was extra careful, and kept the flour cool throughout. The dough was very tacky at 73%, and seemed to lose its shape every time I turned my back on it. It held together enough to make bread though, so I declare it a success. The crust had that mottled look that only wet tacky doughs seem to get.
And the crumb came out ok notwithstanding the mouse hole.
We always seem to photograph slices, but what about the morsels we actually eat?
I almost forgot to say something about the taste. This is very hearty, almost like an unenriched whole wheat loaf, but without the bite back of the bran. I sifted out around 1/3 of the bran, and used only the powdery flour and not the coarse farina. Altogether a very pleasant flavorful loaf.
Formula and Method:
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1st feed |
2nd feed |
mix |
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|
1/30/2013 |
7:00 PM |
10:00 PM |
10:30 AM |
Percent |
||
|
Seed |
23 |
|||||
|
KAAP |
13 |
65 |
90 |
168 |
95% |
|
|
Whole Rye |
1 |
9 |
10 |
5% |
||
|
Water |
9 |
43 |
67 |
119 |
67% |
|
|
297 |
12.9 |
|||||
|
1/31/2013 |
Final |
Starter |
Total |
Percent |
||
|
KAAP |
136 |
136 |
25% |
|||
|
Whole Rye |
8 |
8 |
1% |
|||
|
Golden* |
401 |
401 |
74% |
|||
|
Water |
302 |
96 |
398 |
73% |
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|
Salt |
11 |
11 |
2.0% |
|||
|
Starter |
240 |
26% |
||||
|
954 |
||||||
|
Starter Factor |
0.8 |
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|
Mix flour, water, starter until just blended. |
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Let sit for 1.5 hours |
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Add salt, and mix (by hand) until blended plus a little more. |
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Bulk ferment 2 hours stretching and folding every 20 minutes |
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the last two on the counter, the others in the bowl. |
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Shape into boule and place in banneton. |
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Proof for 1.5 hours until dough softens. |
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Bake at 450 F for 20 minutes with steam |
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and 22 without. |
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* Golden flour is the part of the milled wheat that can get through an extra fine sieve. It is the part of the endosperm that mills to a fine powder (the inner core) plus tiny flecks of bran which gives it a golden color. With the technology I have available, I cannot separate out the bran from the powdery flour to get white flour as that requires use of controlled airflow which lifts out the lighter particles of bran from the heavier flour. The golden flour does not include the coarse meal from the outer endosperm aka farina. With multiple fine millings a lot of the farina can be crushed and so can pass through an extra fine sieve, but I didn't do that this time, and just took the flour that resulted from medium to coarse settings of my Komo.
Bonus photography lesson:
Winter posting can be frustrating as it can be so hard to get a good picture of the crumb. By the time this loaf was ready to cut, daylight was gone. Today, after giving up on getting a good photograph, I remembered that my husband has some very bright work lights. So I fished one of them out of the basement, and gave it a try. I pointed the light at the wall, rather than at the slice, to avoid a bright light bouncing off the bread. But just to demonstrate the difference between regular indoor light plus the camera flash versus a really, really bright light:
Yes, that's the same slice of bread as pictured above.
Here is the light in all its blinding glory:
Final question: Why is it that when I preview the post, I can see the formula table with borders around the cells, but when I post, the borders disappear? Any way to fix?
Comments
Or, can it wait till after I get a mill? :-) Nice baking Varda and the lights really help too. I have to admit we have the AZ sun here that does the same thing - close enough. You are getting into the milling process with great results.
Happy baking.
at Goodwill. Thanks DA. Now I have to run over to your post and comment on your origami. -Varda
Varda,
Beautiful baking - great crumb too. Now, what is Golden in the formula?
Thanks
Linda
Linda, I've posted so much about milling and sifting that I thought I'd give people a break so I didn't give an explanation. Golden flour is what I've been calling the flour that can get through #55 sieve after milling wheat berries. It is a combination of flour and tiny flecks of bran which give it a golden color. Last time I milled I tried to speed things up by just doing one pass through the mill at fine setting, but I fried the flour and my loaves were a disaster. This time, I milled coarse and then sifted in a 55, and then went through a few more rounds of milling the leavings, but never at fine. So I kept it cool, but didn't get that much of the fine golden flour. That's ok. I use the other stuff for other things. Thanks for your comments. -Varda
Beautiful bread Varda. I love the color of the crust and your nice open crumb.
As far as the photos go I feel your pain. I've been able to shoot during the day using a tripod and a long exposure with good results. I tried using an old movie light once at night but wasn't crazy about te results. Yours came out very well lit.
regards
Ian
I haven't tried a tripod yet, as I find that if I have a nice puddle of sunlight all is well. But it's a good idea. Thanks for your comments. -Varda
Do try the tri-pod. It allows for a long exposure without worrying about the amount of light. As long as I have a sliver of light it comes out great. I use the self-timer just to eliminate any possible camera shake.
Ian
Varda,
Every time I use this I remember that I'd meant to send you the idea after reading this bit of thread following your recent Golden Miche post. I picked up the bean bag tripod substitute idea when on photo safari in Africa many years ago.
I made a couple of them out of about a pound of dried beans (navy, kidney, whatever -- leave bag in freezer for a week immediately after sewing into bag, to kill off any bugs in them), sewn into a rectangle of cloth. On safari, one stands up through the open roof of the stopped tour vehicle, flops the bean bag on the roof and nestles the camera into it to capture animal X with Mt Kilimanjaro in the background (where X = the animal de jour). In the kitchen, I flop the bag on the lid of our compost bucket or, as seen here, on the island, set the camera on it and snap loaves and crumb on timed delay to enable low ISO (100) for long exposures with lens wide open for fine resolution and minimal depth of field (i.e., fuzzed out -- bokeh'd, as camera nuts call it -- background). Bean bag has a zillion other tripod substitute uses besides snapping bread photos, obviously :-)
Cheers,
Tom
Strangely I have a tripod or there is a perfectly good one in the house which I've never used for bread. Why not? Can't say. I tend to anchor myself when I hold the camera and guess I didn't realize what a difference it could make. Will try it next time I post and report back. Thanks for explaining the details. -Varda
Lovely bread, Varda, with a bonus info on photography, too. :) What is 'Golden' in the main ingredients? Your home-milled flour?
Hey Lumos. I just updated the post to explain Golden flour. I was being too cryptic. Also, I posted the cloth above just for you. My daughter brought it back from Ghana, where she was just doing some work. Thanks for your comments. -Varda
Thanks, Varda. Fascinating. With all those possibilities you can play around with home-milled flour, I can see why some people are hooked to it......though a thought of air-blowing flour (in a house!!!!) as a method of shifting almost gives me a headache....:p
Beautiful cloth! It's really interesting because only a few weeks ago one of my friends showed me some textiles she bought in a street market in Accra. She's starting re-decorating a house soon and bought the fabric to make curtains, cushion covers, etc. The patterns are quite different from what your daughter bought for you, but the colours were just as bright and really lovely. What are you going to do with your cloth?
Lumos,
I was just saying the the big mills use air flow to separate off bran. Not me. Khalid tried once with a hair dryer. Ok, I'll admit it. Even though Khalid's attempt was a fiasco which involved a lot of cleaning up, I tried it too. Not good. I think what I want is a centrifuge.
As for the cloth, my daughter was in northern Ghana. She said that there were very few consumer goods to be had, but she did see a lot of cloth which people buy and make into clothing. She bought me one yard, specifically as a backdrop for my bread photos. She thought that the cloth was not made in Ghana but probably imported from Asia, and made specifically for the West African market. But she was only there for a month, and not an expert in export/import so who knows.
-Varda
Nice looking loaf!
Yes, there is a bug with the tag filtering running here. I just made a change that made the border show up on this post.
Floyd, Thanks for the fix. It makes my posts more readable. And thank you for your comments. -Varda
hi varda, love the bread. hard work for a good bite! so worth it. thanks for sharing.
evon
when the bread fails. Thanks so much for your comments. -Varda
about this overheatingand the troubles you had.
I'm ashamed to say that in my "single thread" life I've been working on lamination - so I haven't been pushing the milling. Of course with the hand mill, I can't crank enough to ever overheat, but I would have supposed with the Komo it still would be difficult. So, I'm curious about what you did.
Did you dough seem to be ok immediately after the mix and then go slack? That's one symptom of excessive starch damage - which again, I would not think particularly possible with the Komo.
I'm working my way through the very dense "Wheat Flour Milling" book and my head spins with the number of factors about how the wheat itself is treated that can influence the final loaf. And I haven't even gotten past the cleaning and storage processes!
Nice bread. Still curious about the milling issues you are having.
Pat
Pat,
It is very easy to overcook flour in a Komo. Shortly before I did it, I saw this thoughtful reply from Yerffej to a post from Linder - first comment down - so I was forewarned. But I didn't pay attention. And I ended up tossing the loaf out back for the coyotes.
I have been separating my milled wheat into three components which I call golden, coarse, and bran. In the past, I'd do a sequence of increasingly fine millings separated by sifting in a #55. Each time, some of the golden flour would pass through the sieve, but to get more, I had to mill the leavings a little finer. So I thought, why not just mill the whole thing fine, and skip all the extra work. So I did, and I was able to shave off a half hour while getting a pretty good yield of the golden flour. But as with many shortcuts, the result was very sad. The initial symptom was exactly as you say. The dough would behave very well, and then suddenly very badly, slackening without warning. And the final loaf had big nasty holes, and compacted crumb. Ptui. It took me awhile to figure out what had happened, but I was able to because I have had this experience before, when trying to get a good result with 100% atta durum loaves. Andy was the one who pointed out (after my third attempt or so) that it was probably a flour issue and due to starch damage.
I have been doing some reading as well - more of the web grazing variety. It seems that after separating the bran and germ out, the commercial mills go through a sequence of milling steps where they first pull off the patent flour (easily powdered inside of the endosperm.) Then roll through the remainder and pull off subsequent layers - first and second clear flour. The second clear flour gets steered off for animal feed, and the first clear is used as a protein enhancer mix in (plus a small amount sold directly by King Arthur.) They end up recovering 75% of the berry for white flour presumably not including the bran, germ, and second clear.
I on the other hand, start with a berry and end up with something like 10% bran, 65% golden, 25% coarse where coarse is a mix of farina, bran, germ and golden is a mix of let's call it white flour and bran. No matter how much milling I do, I can't get more than 65% to go through my finest sieve and of that a few percentage points are fine bran.
The endosperm is something like 82% of the berry, but I don't know percentages of patent, first clear, and second clear. I also don't know if there is a hard line between these categories on some sort of physical level, or if the categories are a function of the milling process. The answers to these questions would help me somehow or other. Maybe I just want to know.
Ok. Probably more than you have time for given the demands of work and lamination. I was very happy to see you checking in. Hope to hear more from you on this subject or any other.
-Varda
Very interesting. I think I have the information on percentages of each stream "somewhere" but not easily accessible now. I'll remember, though, and get back to you. My word is bond - sometimes it takes years to get your money, but that's how bonds are...
I do know that part of the reason for tempering wheat is to get the endosperm to powder better. I also know as you get closer to the bran the protein content increases (but protein quality in terms of how the flour acts in the dough and through the fermentation process goes down) and the ash content increases. I need to check (again) but would speculate that this is a function of the composition of the wheat berry itself and will vary with the batch of wheat. The protein and ash could be measured by a lab to see if the various mill streams were running to spec (if that's what you were asking...) - but I haven't gotten to that part of my book, yet.
After reading your referenced thread I'm now very curious. I can get down to "silk" with the Diamant. My finest sieve is 100 mesh (and I even get some bran through that), but even before that the flour looses its gritty feel even when it is chock full of bran. Actually, I can get almost pure bran down to "silk." The Diamant is steel burrs. I wonder if they really make that much difference.
So much time - so little to do. No, wait, strike that - reverse it!
Pat
Pat, Were you referring to the statement that stone milled flower is gritty in the comment on Linder's post? My golden flour is decidedly not gritty but silky and lovely. The coarse flour is nothing but gritty - more of less the consistency of sand with some soft bran mixed in. No, I wasn't worrying about lab measurements. I'm just trying to figure out the composition of my various flours and for that, I think I need the more general info. Hoping to cash in on that bond. -Varda
I was referring to Linder's post.
OK - I hope this is the answer to the question that you actually asked (I am now the proud owner of a 132 page small print book on the sole topic of "wheat flour") But I've got some kind of" brain fog" today...
Whole wheat - extraction rate 100%
Flour with most of the wheat and germ removed (about 72% extraction) is called straight grade flour
Patent flours have the streams with high bran content removed and are always less than 72%. They vary from between 65% for long patent and 45% for short patent.
Clear flour is composed of the streams that are between 65 and 72% extraction.
Many folks have discussed the home/stone miling of clear flours, maybe that is being approximated by your coarse flour.(?) Have you ever tried milling it down further? After a couple of milling passes I get a kind of granular material with lots of bran, but I always do a couple more passes until I get nearly pure bran (of course we'll never get the same results as with a roller mill...)
Hope this is what you were asking...
Happy Milling!
Pat
Pat, This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks so much.
Best to put these numbers in a chart:
Flour/Wheat composition
Pat's numbers
Wikipedia
Endosperm
83%
Patent
65%
Clear
7%
Flour X
11%
Remainder of the Endosperm
Germ
2%
Bran
15%
My milling
Golden
68%
Flour that passes through a #55 sieve
Coarse
22%
Flour that can't minus some bran removed
Bran
10%
The bran removed
Putting these together
My milling
Composition
Golden
68%
Patent
65%
Bran
3%
Coarse
22%
Clear
7%
Flour X
11%
Germ
2%
Bran
2%
Bran
10%
So one more question: what is flour X? Is it properly called Farina?
As for your question can I mill all the flour down to powder leaving the bran - I haven't been able to, although I admit that I get very tired when the streams fall like snow flurries rather than driving rain, and I generally quit while there is still a bit coming through the sieve. If my breakout above is correct, then I ought to be able to sift all of the clear flour out of the coarse flour, or bring down the coarse flour by about a third. That is unless second clear flour is too coarse to go through. I understand it's used for animal food, so may not be very fine.
(And yes, the brain is foggy - because I can't read your chart and I read charts like this all the time...) calls Flour X "Shorts and bran" - which sounds like a particularly manly breakfast cereal to me.
I don't see a quick reference to "Farina" - perhaps I will find that when I read the whole book (not today, though)
There is also another grade of flour that is produced from the stream between 45% and 65% extraction is called "cutoff flour" but I don't think we'll be producing that on our home mills anytime soon...
Hope this helps - some stuff to think about at any rate (when I can think, that is)
Hmmm. Gives me something to look up. Thank you and hope your customary razor sharpness emerges from the fog :-) -Varda
Some lovely work here Varda,
the crumb has similarities with what I achieve with my local Gilchesters' Farmhouse flour.
Very best wishes
Andy
Andy, I was definitely thinking about your Gilchester miches when I set out to make this, but I hadn't made the correspondence with the crumb. I'll have to go back and look at the pictures side by side. Thanks so much for commenting. Hope all your baking, and selling, and teaching and so forth is going well. -Varda
Hi Varda,
I had these photos in mind:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23811/miche-using-stiff-levain-and-gilchesters-organic-farmhouse-flour
Best wishes
Andy
Andy, Yes, I see. I can imagine the taste. And as I was scanning through your posts trying to find Gilchester crumb, I ran into your amazing seed bread, which I realize I have yet to try. -Varda
wow, wow and wow!! so much information to absorb and learn. i am not lucky enough to own a home flour grinding mill. i really envy what you do here varda, beautiful result.
thank you for sharing and all the bloggers who graciously put in more useful information!!
evonlim
Hi Varda,
You've done an outstanding job keeping us up to date on the ins and outs of home milling. Thanks for your posts. Just out of curiosity, how do the particular varieties of wheat that you have available affect the color and the behavior of your doughs?
Oh, and the indirect lighting technique is a great photo tip.
-Brad
Hi Brad, Good question about behavior. I'm still trying to figure that out. I have been screening my Massachusetts wheat into 3 categories. The golden flour I used for the bake in this post really does have a gold color (from the tiny particles of bran in it) and so turns the bread that color. The color is exaggerated in the very bright light of the crumb photo, but that is still pretty accurate. The coarse flour is completely different. It has larger bran particles in it, and so looks fairly brown. If you shake it around though, the bran particles cluster and the underlying flour is pretty much a bit of an off white. I still haven't figured out how to get more of the bran out of it. I have been using the coarse flour in its own starter and I think it does a fantastic job. (Unfortunately that means I now have three starters.) It really is coarse though, so if you use it in the final dough it needs an overnight soak to take the edge off. The golden flour is decidedly not white, and doesn't act like white flour. It has more body and fullness and of course more flavor, but you have to watch it like a hawk. For this bake, I did the many stretches and folds, as I didn't trust it to maintain development. Other times I've used it has been a little more well behaved. I think this has to do with the handling of the flour during milling more than anything else. If I were more scrupulously careful to keep it cool, I think I'd have better results. Next time. For more accurate information I guess I'd need to do a protein and ash analysis. But I don't plan too, unless I completely lose my mind. Thanks for commenting and for your interest. -Varda