January 8, 2017 - 9:50pm
Home milled A/P flour?
I have Prairie Gold, hard Spring red, hard spring white, and soft white wheat berries. I know that soft white is best for pastry or cake, but is there a combination that can render the equivalent of all purpose flour? I know that sifting the bran out of the hard wheats will soften somewhat the textureand flavor, but won't affect protein content, which is what is most important in figuring which flour to use.
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What do you want to make? I have both hard and soft berries. I mill the soft berries when I make things like pancakes, and the hard berries for bread. For pasta, I mix the hard and soft in equal portions. For the most part, I am using whole wheat for the nutrition benefits, so I usually more interested in adapting a recipe to work with 100% whole wheat, rather than trying to mix the blends to hit something similar to AP. Check out what King Arthur says about substituting bread flour for AP http://blog.kingarthurflour.com/2016/07/21/substitute-bread-flour-all-purpose-flour/ They say for their flours, in general you can substitute without dramatic changes.
It all depends on which variety of all purpose you want to emulate. If you were trying to go for more of a Pillsbury/Gold Medal AP (lower protein AP), then I'd say use mostly soft white wheat. If you're trying to go for more of a King Arthur AP (higher protein), then I'd use hard spring white.
I mill and sift my own flour with a GrainMaker. And you'd be surprised at how well fresh soft white wheat flour compares to conventional store-bought AP. All classic French wheat breads were made with soft white wheat, as they didn't have hard berries; those were a German and Eastern European crop. So you can actual do a lot with soft white wheat.
For sifting, I'd suggest using a #70 mesh. I use a #70 Newark SuperlaSieve and a small boar-bristle brush to do mine. The brush is key, as the openings in the mesh are not wide enough to shake the flour through. The brush helps push them through, while leaving the vast majority of bran behind. It's very labor intensive, but the flour is spectacular.
Thank you so very much! I have always used KAF, before I got a mill, so that is what I'm trying to emulate. This is the exact, precise information that I needed.You are a genius!
Happy baking!
Rebecca
you won't be able to make AP flour of any kind so no worries. You will likely end up with a great high extraction flour and that is way, way better than any AP flour to be found anywhere.
Particularly if you temper the wheat, have a higher-quality mill, and the right sieves, you can get something very much like AP flour or pastry flour. Of course, there's no way to separate out the germ, but the vast majority of the bran can be separated. I wouldn't bother with the exercise if it was closer to whole wheat than not.
In fact, when I use Bob's Red Mill soft white wheat berries, my pastry flour is whiter than the Bob's Red Mill pastry flour. Again, I understand it's not pure endosperm like the bagged stuff, but it looks essentially as pure. And I've never had anyone eat anything made with my fresh/sieved flour and ask if it was whole wheat. I bake with white flour.