The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

High-extraction Whole Wheat Flour

colinwhipple's picture
colinwhipple

High-extraction Whole Wheat Flour

I want to make a Pointe-a-Calliere Miche from Hamelman's book, so I need some high-extraction flour, and decided to try and make some from KA whole wheat flour.

 We have a couple of sifters in our kitchen, so I tried one with a large sifting bowl first.  That one didn't sift out anything.  Then I tried a smaller one and it sifted out about 7/8ths of an ounce of reddish looking stuff from one pound of whole wheat flour.  I then sifted another ounce so that I would end up with a full pound of flour.  Does that process sound about right?  Am I where I want to be?

Colin

suave's picture
suave

The reddish stuff is bran and at 7/8 oz per pound you are not sifting out enough of it.  I tried sifting KAF ww and it just far too fine to make high-extraction flour. You're probably going to be better off  adding some bread flour as Hamelman suggests.

 Mike

Soundman's picture
Soundman

Colin,

I made high-extraction flour as a necessity, or so I thought. You need some coarsely milled WW flour (and for this purpose I highly recommend red rather than white). Where to get coarse WW flour? That depends on where you live. If you are lucky you have a miller somewhere not to far from where you live and if they mill hard red wheat, get some from them, making sure it isn't too finely ground.

Here in the Northeast US there are a number of small mills, and I found one in New Hampshire that milled organic hard red wheat. (The organic part isn't necessary but it fit my temperament at the time.) The flour was quite coarse, so I got a sieve and sifted, and the result was heavenly flour, fresh and soft but with plenty of bran and germ, just not all of it.

Good luck!

Soundman (David)

colinwhipple's picture
colinwhipple

I had regular KA whole-wheat flour, so that is what I used.

I ended up adding about a 1/2 cup of bread flour to the one pound of whole wheat flour that I had sifted some of the bran out of.

The bread I made tasted pretty good, but I have never tasted a miche before so I don't know if it could have been  better.

Colin