February 19, 2013 - 11:44am
high protien whole wheat flour
I am a pseudo newbie. I have been making bread with a bread machine for years but am just now braving Reinhart's BBA and doing it by hand. I was looking at his whole wheat bread recipe and he specified high protien whole wheat flour. I use King Arthur whole wheat flour and I know from experience with bread machines that I have to add vital wheat gluten to make it rise. Will adding vital wheat gluten be a substitute for the specified high protient whole wheat flour?
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Your experiences with it aside, I believe KA whole wheat is probably precisely the type of flour being prescribed. Along with his prescibed techniques, don't know if you will be able to find a more suitable ww flour for making breads. That's what KA prides itself on.
I personally swear by KA ww in my breads, especially their white ww, although I don't make any 100% ww breads. That's not to say other brands are not also perfectly suitable. I just use KA as a reference standard. There may be even more suitable brands, I just personally have not used any. Especially not for purchase in your typical grocery store. You could probably find some by special order.
I would try to find a complete flour instead of messing around with adding gluten to your flour. KA makes a 14% protein WW flour in their professional organic line. The flour is not enriched or malted so you would need to know what you are doing, but it is a very good WW flour.
Happy Baking!
Most bread machine recipes call for vital wheat gluten in whole wheat breads. This is due to the short, fixed cycle on the bread machine. The need to ad vital wheat gluten reflects on this rather than the quality of your flour.
When baking "freestyle" as it were, you should not need this addition to make good bread.
The same King Arthur flour you are buying now should work in Mr Reinhart's recipes. He has developed them as he has just for this purpose.
Whole wheat flours are not usually enriched or malted - so you needn't be concerned about that.
Hope this helps.