Home Milled with Malt Experiment
As promised I did a test loaf with my home milled high extraction flour. I used .01% of diastatic malt by weight of the flour and baked using my standard "test loaf" formula. Once again, I went by the numbers - strokes, folds, dough temperature, and fermentation times as for my other loaves.
The results of the .01% malt are posted here: http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii183/proth5/Homemilledmalt1.jpg
For comparison a non-malted loaf is posted here: http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii183/proth5/FreshGroundCrumb.jpg
My observation is that except for some minor variations in shaping and slashing, the loaves were pretty much the same. If anything, I would say that the malted loaf rose a bit more and was a bit more lively during shaping, but that might be my imagination. I didn't notice any significant gumminess in the crumb - again, I didn't notice much difference at all. .01% is a very small amount of malt and perhaps I will run a second test with a higher percent in the future.
But for now, I just don't think I need to malt the home milled. It may be that there is a balance within the parts of the grain that are used that tends to compensate for the relatively high Falling Number or just...well, I don't know anymore. Any comments that can shed light on this would be much appreciated.
My next test bake will be home milled that has been aged for 2 months - which is the recommended aging for whole wheat type flours. We'll see if my patience pays off.
Happy Baking!
Comments
Hi Pat,
It sounds like we are in agreement as far as not finding a need for malt in these freshly home-milled flours, at least so far.
Do you have a link to a description of your recipe for the test loaves? I seem to remember you described your process, but I'm not finding it at the moment. I'm just curious to see how your process compares to what I've been doing for home-milled sourdough. In particular, I was interested in how long and at what temperature the various components are hydrated. As you know, I have been doing an overnight soak on all the flour in my recipes lately.
Also, I was wondering about your choice of .01%. I'm traveling and can't look up the recommendations in Bread. It sounds like much less than what I had thought would typically be suggested.
Bill
Hi Bill!
Well my over busyness is starting to show - how about .1%? That's what is right and about on the order of common recommendations - and what I really used. When I can't keep my decimal points straight, maybe I need to take some time off from experiments...
Like every good engineer/baker, I have a spreadsheet for my formula, but I just hit my computer literacy limit and don't know how to post it - I'll briefly type in the formula:
Preferement 12% of total flour
I make a levain build for multiple loaves all at onece but in percents for the preferment alone -
20% - liquid storage starter
100% flour (12% of total flour)
100% water
Overall formula:
Flour 100%
Water 72%
Salt 2%
Liquid storage levain 4.8%
Desired dough temp 76%
I mix the levain build and let it ripen overnight.
When the levain is ripe - I mix all ingredients to a shaggy mass. Then at intervals of 30 mins I give the dough 30 "strokes" with a plastic scraper - this is repeated 6 times.
45 mins at 73-74 degrees of bulk fermantaion and then a fold
45 more mins at same temp and then a fold
45 more mins of bulk
Preshape - rest 15 mins - shape - 1 hour proof at 73-74 degrees - bake at 500 - 450 in well steamed oven on a baking stone.
I haven't tried the soaking method, yet and mean to in the near future because I think you are really on to something with it - I just wanted to stay on my standard formula so I am only varying one factor at a time. Unfortunately I won't be baking for the next few weeks because of other obligations.
Hope this is useful.
Pat
Pat,
OK, I was wondering if maybe there was a missing decimal. At 0.1%, it all makes sense. Thanks for the recipe. It's very clear what you're doing now.
Bill