October 13, 2015 - 2:38pm
Just bought Hard White Wheat...now what? :)
I just bought 25 lbs of hard white wheat but have no clue where to go from here! I assume I need a mill or grinder of some sort to grind it into flour? I'm not an amateur baker, just completely 100% amateur to anything but a 5lb bag of flour from the store! :) Soooo, with my hard white wheat...how do I turn it into yummy bread?
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We have been regularly buying 25# bags of HWW as well (Central Milling? It's very good) and mill+bake weekly with it.
For enriched sandwich pan loaves, we mill it mixed 50:50 with hard red wheat. For our weekly 100% whole grain naturally leavened miche, we've lately been mixing it 75:25 with hard red. We find hard white to be pretty flat tasting by itself, so the sharp notes of red wheat are helpful in rounding out a SD breads' overall flavor profile.
But that's just us. You should certainly try 100% hard white, or at least try it as the sole whole grain in a formula with all or less than 100% whole grain. You might like the mildness. Many do, but that probably depends somewhat on the rest of your diet and thus your palette's expectations.
Happy milling and baking.
Tom
Yes, you will need a mill or grinder. Do a search here and you should find plenty of info of different options, and different price points.
Multiple options for this whole wheat/grain flour once it's milled. There are many threads on this forum about the mill options.
Can use milled grains in bread or sprout grains, dehydrate and mill into sprouted whole wheat flour.
you might be interested in this thread which covers milling hard white wheat for bread
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/6985/wheat-red-vs-white-spring-vs-winter
Here's a photo of the flour you can mill using a Nutrimill
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2237/2435560718_cc5884c607.jpg
Welcome Baking for my Famiy
Uhhmm, the horse goes in front of the cart.
Don't be offended, just a little humor. But to me, you're doing things a little bass-ackwards. And that's OK, it's just that most folks get the mill first, then the grain.
Yes, you obviously need a mill. There are many on the market and I'm sure that each one has been used by someone here on this forum.
I was in your situation about a year ago. I made my choice based not so much on economics as the reality of my environment. I'm not a 'prepper' per se and even tho I live within a quarter mile of the Power Plant (hey, we're on a harbor, it's not so bad), we lose power quite frequently during the course of a year (I still don't understand how that happens, but it does).
So for me, being able to operate my mill without electricity was an important feature.
Long story short (and this is not my 'official' review, that will come later), I chose the WonderMill Jr. I have been reasonably happy with my $220 purchase.
There are many other, for the most part more costly mills out there (I wouldn't recommend anything cheaper), some of them even having a manual operation option; but at a certain point I felt that as my 'starter' mill, I was only willing to invest so much, until I knew how commited I actually was (in reality) to the whole idea and process.
I can tell you that this is a sturdy machine, with an option to be driven by an electric drill that works quite well (if the power is there) and yet is reasonably efficient when hand operated. Also, believe me when I say grinding a pound of flour manually (let alone 5) is a lot of work, but when you're out of power for a week or two (as often happens here), I love having that option.
If you're willing to go to purely electric in operation, there are some mighty fine (albeit expensive) options out there (of which I know little about, other than envy).
Just my input.
dobie
I'm just wondering if you use hard white with or without hard red, will the bread turn out heavy like traditional "Whole wheat" bread recipes. I dont want to invest hundreds of dollars into a mill if i'm not going to like the results.
If you haven't bought a mill yet, try experimenting with store-bought whole wheat flour first.
Some grocery stores now carry both red (traditional) whole wheat flour, and white whole wheat flour. I know Kroger does (Kroger brand and King Arthur brand), and Trader Joe does (Trader Joe brand). If the bag says just "whole wheat" and does not specify red or white, then it's red.
Trader Joe and Kroger brand are priced about half as much as King Arthur.
Suggestion: get a bag of white whole wheat flour, a bag of red (traditional) whole wheat flour, and a bag of Gold Medal Better for Bread (which is refined, not whole wheat) flour.
Experiment with those three to see if you can make a mostly whole wheat loaf that you and your family like.
Many people who use home-milled whole wheat flour use at least a small percentage of store-bought refined white flour in order to get a nice rise and less-dense crumb.
I also suggest starting with 75% whole wheat and 25% refined white flour. Of that 75%, start out 1/2 whole-red and 1/2 whole-white, and adjust from there based on what you like. I'm currently making hearth loaves with 10% store-bought refined-white flour, and 90% home-milled whole wheat.
Whole wheat bread will not be as fluffy as all refined-white. But you can do a lot with fermentation times/temps, and procedures (mixing, stretch-and-folding) to develop a good gluten structure and a pleasing crumb.
Thank you for your comments. I will try using the store bought whole wheat flours. If I get to the point of wanting to grind my own berries, (which is my goal), somehow it seems to defeat the purpose (at least for me) to add refined flour to the mi. :-) I've been reading about autolyze and maybe that would help lighten the loaf....Any idea?
100% WW is do-able. But your family may not be ready for it.
I think users DanAyo, barryvabeach, Our Crumb, ifs201, and SheGar make 100% home-milled whole wheat bread. So look at their posts.
I'm not there yet. For me, that 10% refined flour makes the difference between a loaf I enjoy eating, and one that I feel I "have to" eat.
If you look at the major bread cookbook authors, some never include 100% WW, and the rest include just a few formulas. For instance, in Hamelman's much-acclaimed book "Bread" (1st edition), his "whole wheat" loaves only go up to 50-53% WW, and only go higher than that for rye formulas. Forkish only goes up to 50%. Chad Robertson and Peter Reinhart wrote separate books for mostly/all whole grain.
An excellent and inexpensive (used) book that truely is about 100% whole-wheat is Laurel Robertson's "The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book", updated edition, 2003. I got a "very good" condition copy on Amazon's used market for $7.81 includng shipping:
www.amazon.com/Laurels-Kitchen-Bread-Book-Whole-Grain/dp/0812969677?tag=froglallabout-20
Reinhart's book on whole grain: www.amazon.com/Peter-Reinharts-Whole-Grain-Breads/dp/1580087590?tag=froglallabout-20
If you read Kindle books (free app for computers, phones, and tablets) then you will thank me for recommending this ebook that is on sale for only US $3 + tax, Chad Robertson's "Tartine Book No. 3." :
www.amazon.com/dp/B00F8H0FKU?tag=froglallabout-20
Bon appétit!
I hate to sound like a fanboy, but you should check out Maurizio's freshly milled section on ThePerfectLoaf. I swear besides baking pastries and muffins, I was failing time after time for bread. I felt like a burden asking for advice on forums over and over.
Dense, dry sourdough, hard, fallen pan loaves... I found YouTubers with freshly milled recipes that barely worked for me, there are so many variables. But I feel like time allotted for resting and rising sort of mitigate this. In order to allow extra time to work you need to use less yeast and more flour. This seems to help equalize the variations in fresh flour, I think. It's just my hypothesis.
Trying to use freshly milled flour, commercial yeast, and get a decent loaf in 1 hour, I'm sure is somehow possible, but it's just not what it's meant for to me.
Maurizio's recipe was pure gold in my opinion. I really thrived on the "Whole Grain Wheat and Spelt Pan Bread". I will be utilizing those percentages and seeing if they apply to bagels or pretzels. I have a flaker so I got to freshly flake some oats too, the whole thing was unbelievable. It felt like I went back in time to the times before mass production and pesticides, where people might have died from TB but they had some dang wholesome food.