September 2, 2020 - 7:31am
Durum semolina and pistacchio
I enjoy testing flours and ingredients. These days I have been baking with Durum Semolina. I like the sweetness and the crustiness of the bread you can make with this flour.
This time we followed this formula:
Sourdough: 1% starter 10% stoneground flour (Caputo Tipo1) 10% water. 12-14 hours at room temperature.
Final dough: 60% durum semolina (Caputo Semola Rimacinatta), 30% bread flour 65% water 2.2% salt, 10% pistacchio.
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Now you've done it Abel! Made me write up another BBGA spreadsheet for this bread. You must have known that one of my favorite grains is semloa rimacinata. I still have a kilo or two of the Tritordeum "T150" that we bought at Handsel & Grenel. I will use that for the levain instead of the Caputo Tipo 1, and adjust the AP flour and semola.
Oh this interests me as well. I’d love to see how your baguettes turn out Alan. Abel’s bread looks great.
I can get Semola at Eataly here in Toronto, would I use that where you have T 150 listed? Then for the Durum, is that the finely ground Durum Semolina?
a type of "stone ground" AP flour - the Caputo Type 1. I'll swap that out for the "T150" and since tritordeum is a semolina hybrid, I adjusted the total flour amounts from his 30/10/60 to 40/10/50 in an effort to keep the balance between white flour and semolina(-ish) flours the same.
And what makes you so sure I'll be making baguettes out of these? ;-)
Just an educated guess, I’m glad to be proven wrong. ?
At only 10%, it likely doesn't matter what you swap it with.
http://www.mulinocaputo.it/en/flour/la-linea-professionale/tipo-1
says it is a light brown flour, 13% protein.
According to http://theartisan.net/Flours_One.htm
Tipo 1 is .80% ash, or roughly T80 in the French system.
The bran in it likely helps the levain develop.
That's right, italian Tipo1 is more or less the same than french T80. Not white not dark.
didn't really have any designation from the bin where I bought it, and the owner's daughter was minding the store during the time we were there, and she couldn't tell us. But it seems to be about what a whole wheat might be, so I call it that.
The remaining semolina is the semola rimacinata, as in Abel's picture. Apologies for not answering this yesterday.
Here is the near completion of the third build with the "T150". Looks. lot different than 100% hydration AP levain. From the top and side.
Side by side comparison of the two grains.
Thanks for the explanation and accompanying photos, that is very helpful Alan.
You will succeed.
I've never used much semolina in bread baking. Those loaves look so good I may give this a shot.
Wow! Look so good I'm chewing on my iPad! (not enough flavour but getting a little crunch)
I just got back from a walk and went to a grocery store several kilometers away from home so seldom go there. Lo and behold I found this at much less than what Eataly charges so picked it up. Never worked with this before would you say it is similar to working with Kamut?
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Kamut and durum belong both to the same family, so you can substitute.
When you make bread with Durum Semolina, you must pay attention to the % of protein. Caputo semolina is 13gr so it's perfect for making bread. There are some semolinas with lower protein (around 9gr) which are good for making pasta or for dusting pizza, but not for making bread.
This Semola has 14% protein apparently so it should be good, thanks for your response Abel.
Excellent. Maybe you can include some extra water in your recipe.
I will explain you a story. When I lived in Spain, we didn't have access to strong enough flour to make a long long fermentation (16 to 48 hours). So in the bakery, the solution was adding some Semolina flour to our flours mix (around 10%). You know flours in Europe are not so strong as here in the Americas. So semolina was the solution to increase the proteines in our basic flour.
Benny, here is La Molisana's line up of semolina flours:
https://www.lamolisana.it/en/the-semolina-and-flours/
They don't give specs, not even on the Italian language page. I'm guessing it is a high extraction flour because it is stone ground (decorticata a pietra). But it is not whole grain because they have a separate semola that they call "integrale."
You can likely confirm by comparing the nutrional fiber to that of regular roller-milled semola or semola rimacinata, which is germless/branless. (assuming they both use 100g sample size.)
Dave, as usual you seem to be correct. I’ve never seen the Integrale version of semolina in Toronto so this will have to do. I hope it works out well. Abel didn’t specify from what I could tell if the Semola he used was Integrale or not.
Anyways, I plan to make this for the end of next week assuming I get the pistachios in time.
I get roasted unsalted pistachios from Aldi or Hofer. Have to free them of their shells. Not sure what the recipe calls for, unsalted or salted? Unsalted are pretty bland. Abel?
You can toast (not very much, pistacchio can get burn very easy) and season with some salt (just few grams).
Hi Dave.
Italian milled semolina is legally defined, farina di grano duro labelled as "semola" which would also include rimacinata, have a maximum ash content of 0.90%.
I would expect this to be similar to most any other rimacinata in terms of extraction.
I know what you mean but I am a little uncomfortable with those absolute terms "branless" and "germless" because even very refined flours will include traces of those grain parts. I mean, I can see with the naked eye tiny bran pieces even in my type 00 flour (0.55% max).
PS. See more on my blog about Italian flour designations.
Thanks. I thought standard semola was the normal .55%