Any whole wheat should be fine for bread, although whole wheat pastry flour might not work. Typical protein percentages are 10% for all-purpose, 12% for bread flour, and 14% for whole wheat. You might have to adjust the liquid amount a bit though.
In the US, I personally like King Arthur and Bob's Red Mill. In both cases I prefer the organic product lines. However, Bob's has done a better job separating out the nut-free from the nut-contaminated products, so I am tending in that direction for a while.
King Arthur does have a nice White Whole Wheat which is milled from a wheat variety bred (no pun intended) to have a less-brown bran. If your bake-ees don't like the somewhat bitter taste of whole wheat this is a good flour to try.
If you can mill your wheat berry's for your whole wheat flour your bread will taste many, many times better than any store bought whole wheat flour can do,,,,,
Unlike white flour the fresher the whole wheat flour the better....
Just starting with milling my own whole wheat flour and baking bread. Can you just use whole wheat flour and not bread flour as a lot of recipes call for. Do you have any recipes. thanks, ed
We grind our own Whole Grain Flour each baking day. It goes from the mill into the mixer. Currently we are using a Demeter Wheat from Australia.
The poet Pam Ayres once said, when describing her home-made wholemeal bread, that it was like 'biting into a cornfield', and that's it – the very best description I've ever come across. A crisp, crunchy crust and then all the flavour of the wholewheat grain – take a bite, close your eyes and you'll know just what she meant. (taken fron Delia Online)
Using a Kenwood Chef and the mill attachment, I grind organic wheat berries. It tastes much better the day it is milled - even by a week old, some of the "specialness" is gone. So I feel any shop sold whole wheat must have lost something - still, better than nothing!
Using a wheat called "paragon" this year - it is lovely.
Grinding fresh flour is something most artisan bakers at least want to try (I do, but I am not sure how to go about obtaining grain that is certified not to be nut-contaminated), but let's not scare off a first-time wholegrain baker! Flour from a commercial organic supplier is fine for the first months/years of the bread adventure.
Humans have had the option of grinding flour at home since the dawn of agriculture, and I think it tells you something that there have been professional millers since about 3 years after that day.
Nuts, both tree nuts and ground nuts, permeate the food supply in North America (and I believe Europe as well). Clearly nut-based foods need nuts in them, but for reasons I suspect are related to food processing technology nuts have also been added to thousands of foods that one would ordinarily think would not contain them.
The result of adding nuts to so many food products is that our entire food supply chain is contaminated with nuts. You have no way of knowing whether or not the truck that was used to transport the raw corn from southern Illinois that you bought for milling wasn't used to tranport peanuts last week in Georgia. You can't tell whether or not farmers in areas that border nut-growing regions have been alternating row crops and ground nuts (admittedly this is less likely, but you can't be sure).
Significant flour suppliers obtain certifications from their grain suppliers stating whether or not their product is nut-contaminated. They also do nut protein tests on their incoming raw materials. I had a long discussion with a customer service rep from one of the major organic flour suppliers in the US, and the outcome was that if the post-2006 label does not say "nuts or nut fragments" then you can have as much trust in it as you do in anything you don't grow yourself. But I can't find a raw grain supplier that will make the same statement.
A friend gave us a box of bakery goods as a thank-you present last month. Almond pastry with almond oil. Instantly fatal to at least one member of my family. She just forgot when she was making her choice of gift. But as Professor Moody says, "Constant vigilance!".
I always look through the kernels before milling them and I have not yet found any thing other than wheat kernels, so do you mean that if if last years crop in a particular field was growing peanuts and this year it is growing corn, then that also is contaminated.
> so do you mean that if if last years crop in a particular
> field was growing peanuts and this year it is growing corn,
> then that also is contaminated.
It is possible, yes. Nut dust/fragements smaller than the eye can see are quite sufficient to cause an allergic reaction. The product must either have a certified nut-free production chain or be chemically assayed for nut proteins. Or both.
I think this will be my last post on this topic for a while. It is important to me (clearly) but I don't want anyone to think that I am turning the blog into the "nut police".
My wheat is from an organic cereal farm here in the UK, and as I buy it from the farm direct, it has never left the place! So - no nut contaminants.
But as for other conaminants - I am constantly vigilant! Little field mice are constantly adventurous, little birds hopping about - insects of various sorts....so far, I've found none, but I'd hate to mill anything containing other proteins!
Sometimes it is hard to find my prefered Whole wheat flour, Hodgson whole wheat flour. It is stone ground, real stone ground resulting in big particles of flour. I figure that if the yeast has such a hard time digesting my dough I will too and not get a sugar spike in my blood. I had vital gluten to help me with it. and I also add from the same company rye flour which makes it even harder to rise. Anyone doing it like me in here?
Any whole wheat should be fine for bread, although whole wheat pastry flour might not work. Typical protein percentages are 10% for all-purpose, 12% for bread flour, and 14% for whole wheat. You might have to adjust the liquid amount a bit though.
In the US, I personally like King Arthur and Bob's Red Mill. In both cases I prefer the organic product lines. However, Bob's has done a better job separating out the nut-free from the nut-contaminated products, so I am tending in that direction for a while.
King Arthur does have a nice White Whole Wheat which is milled from a wheat variety bred (no pun intended) to have a less-brown bran. If your bake-ees don't like the somewhat bitter taste of whole wheat this is a good flour to try.
HTH.
sPh
If you can mill your wheat berry's for your whole wheat flour your bread will taste many, many times better than any store bought whole wheat flour can do,,,,,
Unlike white flour the fresher the whole wheat flour the better....
qahtan
Hi,
Just starting with milling my own whole wheat flour and baking bread. Can you just use whole wheat flour and not bread flour as a lot of recipes call for. Do you have any recipes. thanks, ed
We grind our own Whole Grain Flour each baking day. It goes from the mill into the mixer. Currently we are using a Demeter Wheat from Australia.
The poet Pam Ayres once said, when describing her home-made wholemeal bread, that it was like 'biting into a cornfield', and that's it – the very best description I've ever come across. A crisp, crunchy crust and then all the flavour of the wholewheat grain – take a bite, close your eyes and you'll know just what she meant. (taken fron Delia Online)
Regards,
Martin
www.bakerette-cafe.com
Using a Kenwood Chef and the mill attachment, I grind organic wheat berries. It tastes much better the day it is milled - even by a week old, some of the "specialness" is gone. So I feel any shop sold whole wheat must have lost something - still, better than nothing!
Using a wheat called "paragon" this year - it is lovely.
Andrew
I also use my Kenwood mill, I some times add about 10% flax seeds to my whole
wheat berries, most times I do it twice......
I get organic hard wheat. qahtan
There is no comparison in the taste of fresh milled and shop bought....
Grinding fresh flour is something most artisan bakers at least want to try (I do, but I am not sure how to go about obtaining grain that is certified not to be nut-contaminated), but let's not scare off a first-time wholegrain baker! Flour from a commercial organic supplier is fine for the first months/years of the bread adventure.
Humans have had the option of grinding flour at home since the dawn of agriculture, and I think it tells you something that there have been professional millers since about 3 years after that day.
sPh
I don't know what you mean about your grain that is certified not to be nut infested.
The organic kernels /berries I buy are "Oak Manor" and are very clean and ready to mill.
Oak Manor Farms, Ontario, Canada.,,,,, qahtan
Nuts, both tree nuts and ground nuts, permeate the food supply in North America (and I believe Europe as well). Clearly nut-based foods need nuts in them, but for reasons I suspect are related to food processing technology nuts have also been added to thousands of foods that one would ordinarily think would not contain them.
The result of adding nuts to so many food products is that our entire food supply chain is contaminated with nuts. You have no way of knowing whether or not the truck that was used to transport the raw corn from southern Illinois that you bought for milling wasn't used to tranport peanuts last week in Georgia. You can't tell whether or not farmers in areas that border nut-growing regions have been alternating row crops and ground nuts (admittedly this is less likely, but you can't be sure).
Significant flour suppliers obtain certifications from their grain suppliers stating whether or not their product is nut-contaminated. They also do nut protein tests on their incoming raw materials. I had a long discussion with a customer service rep from one of the major organic flour suppliers in the US, and the outcome was that if the post-2006 label does not say "nuts or nut fragments" then you can have as much trust in it as you do in anything you don't grow yourself. But I can't find a raw grain supplier that will make the same statement.
A friend gave us a box of bakery goods as a thank-you present last month. Almond pastry with almond oil. Instantly fatal to at least one member of my family. She just forgot when she was making her choice of gift. But as Professor Moody says, "Constant vigilance!".
sPh
I always look through the kernels before milling them and I have not yet found any thing other than wheat kernels, so do you mean that if if last years crop in a particular field was growing peanuts and this year it is growing corn, then that also is contaminated.
qahtan
> so do you mean that if if last years crop in a particular
> field was growing peanuts and this year it is growing corn,
> then that also is contaminated.
It is possible, yes. Nut dust/fragements smaller than the eye can see are quite sufficient to cause an allergic reaction. The product must either have a certified nut-free production chain or be chemically assayed for nut proteins. Or both.
I think this will be my last post on this topic for a while. It is important to me (clearly) but I don't want anyone to think that I am turning the blog into the "nut police".
sPh
My wheat is from an organic cereal farm here in the UK, and as I buy it from the farm direct, it has never left the place! So - no nut contaminants.
But as for other conaminants - I am constantly vigilant! Little field mice are constantly adventurous, little birds hopping about - insects of various sorts....so far, I've found none, but I'd hate to mill anything containing other proteins!
Andrew
Sometimes it is hard to find my prefered Whole wheat flour, Hodgson whole wheat flour. It is stone ground, real stone ground resulting in big particles of flour. I figure that if the yeast has such a hard time digesting my dough I will too and not get a sugar spike in my blood. I had vital gluten to help me with it. and I also add from the same company rye flour which makes it even harder to rise. Anyone doing it like me in here?