Milling my own flour - newbie
Hello, I am new here but have been reading posts for a long time. I am a serious amateur baker and have recently gotten interested in milling my own flour. But I use predominately white organic bread or APF. I sometimes mix in some KA Whole Wheat or rye, but in low percentages of 10-50%. I hear all about the wonders of fresh milled flour and that I cannot really mill my own white flour. I really want to make it work for my baking.
My question: If I switch to only using fresh milled flour, what can I expect in terms of flavor and texture? Is it essentially like going 100% whole wheat (more or less)? My kids are hard to please and they frown on 100% whole wheat products. I make my own hamburger buns, pita bread, pan breads/sandwich breads, etc. So for my family, they aren't necessarily hard-core artisan bread connoisseurs, if that makes sense??
Should I forget milling and just stick to quality store-bought organic white flour?
Thank you for any advice!
Mike
gradually or make bread for yourself and a different one for them. Better to meet in the middle and save yourself a lot of work. If the bread is good the kids will eat it .......or die.........eeeerrrr......... or wish they did!
MIke, whole wheat comes in many varieties - what you commonly see in the store as whole wheat bread is the red berry and it has a grassy flavor. You can buy hard white wheat berries, and they don't have that strong a flavor, and are much more like a white flour in taste. What your kids will notice is that the texture is pretty firm compared to white bread. You can try dabrownman's suggestion to start with 90% bread flour 10% whole wheat, and then gradually change the percentages. If you use white wheat berries, they will taste fresher, but not strong like store bought wheat. If you reach a point where they don't like it because it is not soft enough, try the Tanzhong method, http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/36646/100-whole-wheat-loaves-tangzhong-method
Great and useful advice, thank you very much. I will buy white hard wheat if I do a first attempt.
You can take the middle path. Run the freshly ground flour through an appropriate sieve. With a #20, you will catch a lot of the bran, which can be used in a variety of ways or tossed. The flour that passes the sieve will be more flavorful and more nutritious than what you are now using.
Thanks for the great advice. I never thought of screening out some of the bran. What is a #20? Is that the size of the screen. When I look at sifters like KoMo makes, they refer to them in mm, and super-fine is 0.63mm.
#20 is usually taken to be .85mm mesh. Google the conversion charts.
Number of suggestions:
First find a way to get the kids involved in grinding the wheat. Make it their bread. (I took a number of my daughters friends fishing and pulled out the coleman, got them to clean their own fish and then they ate it. Most of the parents, when told of what we did we confident that their little darling would never ear fish! Until they were told that they just had eaten a small blue gill that they caught, cleaned and cooked. Opps)
When I first started I wanted to do my new wheat storage / bread making on the cheap. I picked up 5 gal buckets from the local grocery store (they get icing in them) and started to look for a wheat source. Shipping and other expenses were looking to be expensive so I started contacting friends that had horses to see if they could get a 50# bag of wheat from their feed store. It was at this time I found a friend that not only had horses but her husband also had 80 acres of winter wheat that would be harvested shortly. I have done my best to share as much bread as I can with the farmer (they love it) and that makes them a part of the team. I get the wheat from the combine at his avoided cost. (Very cheap considering that he sells it by the dump truck load to the granary.) The bread has expanded our friendship and when he has a new crop he always asked me if I would be interested. This year I am learning how to dehull oats. Great hobby, great exercise, and the bread is good for you.
To keep the bread from being to rough I got a metal colander / sifter from papered chef that I put all of the ground wheat through. The sifter catches the fiber that doesn't brake down as fast or easy as the starch (endosperm). I dump the sifter back into the mill hopper and put it through with the next load of grain. I also use the coarse fiber to powder the greased bread pan or on the bottom of the dinner rolls I cook on a pizza stone.
Have fun with it.
Jay
Thanks Jay,
Interesting ideas. What kind of sifter are you using that you might recommend? I was looking at the KoMo one to go with the mill, but it seems pretty expensive and it might not be any more effective than others.
I like the idea of getting kids involved in making things, but once I had mine help me clean up a crab. It was admittedly pretty disgusting and by the time we were done, they wanted nothing to do with it! :( I think bread making will be a lot better.
I know I'm jumping in late and you asked Jay and not me -- but assuming you'll forgive these indiscretions:
I use an inexpensive 40-mesh sifter I bought from Breadtopia when I want to remove most of the bran from flour I mill with my Komo, which is only occasionally - scones, other pastries, etc . Once you get the hang of it, it doesn't take long to put the flour through, although you do need a pretty wide bowl. It usually sifts out about 15% of the flour by weight, and produces something similar to high extraction flour. The sifted out bran is nice for adding to oats or using for bran muffins.
But if you plan to sift every time, the Komo's integrated unit might make more sense. - Eric
When baking for the farmer's market this summer I had a lady ask me about 100% whole grain bread. I had tried in the past and only made bricks. I was making 50/50 with really good results but wasn't sure about 100%. I was wondering if I could make something not dense. What I did was an extended soaking of just the flour and water then added my starter and grains etc. I can't remember which book I was rereading, I think it was Tartine 3, but they use an extended autolayse, up to 4 hrs and all the loaves are 100% whole grain. So I soaked the flour and water for about 4 hours then added the other stuff except salt and let it sit about 30 min. Then added the salt and proceeded with folding. The 100% loaf was almost indistinguishable from the 50/50 loaves. So I considered that a total win.
On getting the kids to eat it, I agree with the others, get them involved. My youngest will run the Komo mill for me while I weight everything out. Also the Komo will grind finer than any other mill I have tried. And I think that helps as well. Best of luck!
Mike, did you end up buying a grain mill to make bread with?
I love the suggestions of getting kids involved - I know for myself, the first time I successfully made a loaf of bread it felt so empowering, rewarding, and exciting that I can imagine it would be fun for a kid too. And nothing like cleaning a crab! ;)
I use Prairie Gold hard white wheat berries from Wheat Montana and it's fantastic. I never get that bitter wheat flavor that storebought wheat products often have. I think the things I bake with my home ground flour taste so much fresher than other flours. My husband can be picky like a kid and he's always happy to eat the things I bake, if that helps.
For good texture, I've found that higher hydration, a 15-minute rest before kneading, and 20 minutes of kneading have great results. I also try to use ingredients that tenderize the whole grain wheat like yogurt, milk, honey, and oil.
Oh, and one way to get them on board might be to make little pizzas with homemade flour! I included a recipe for skillet pizzas in my cookbook that would allow each person to top their own personal pizza - made with 100% whole grain wheat flour.
This is really a huge thank you to The Fresh Loaf. I also thought my experience may be useful to new millers.
After years of commercial 100% whole wheat bread (not very whole wheat), I read that the recent gluten problem was probably due to undercooked bread. And a whole lot more about commercially made bread. So, I thought I would make some bread.
I bought a secondhand bread machine for $15 and made a few bricks. I developed a recipe (after further research) which had a 60% wheat: 40% white ratio, and included butter, oil, malt syrup and extra gluten. The dough would sit in the fridge for 8 to 24 hours. It worked. I got nice soft bread, but it wasn't wholemeal. I experimented with cutting down the white flour to about 70%: 30%. I kept reading, and I decided that commercial wholemeal flour probably wasn't very fresh, and probably wasn't true wholemeal. So I bought some wheat berries and had fun with a rocket blender, and a food processor, and a fine sieve. It was kind of stoneground, without the stone.
Then I bought a hand cranked Victorio Mill. This was progress. I gradually changed the recipe, gradually cutting out the white flour and the gluten, adding sunflower seeds, flax seeds and poppy seeds. And then I bought a motor for the Victorio. This is high tech now.
I find I can use the freshly ground flour for any bread, for pizza dough, to make crepes, and I am going to try cake, probably after sifting out some bran. I still use the breadmaker to knead the dough, but now I take it now for shaping, proving and baking.
I make really good bread, with really very little effort. Thank you, bakers of The Fresh Loaf. You were my source of information and inspiration.
Lasallia, glad you are having some success. One issue with home milling is that mills are pretty expensive, so it is a fairly big hurdle for many bakers to buy a mill.