Susytwo, I use KA WW Pastry Flour a lot. I use more of it than AP. Like you I use it for pancakes/waffles & muffins. I use it for cookies especially all those with oatmeal. Also for biscuits & dumplings about 1/2 the time. It's good for pie crust & makes a great crunch topping for apple pie. I sure wish my local grocery store carried it...I have to buy lots when we make our semi-annual trips to KA's store in VT.

I've not heard of Red Fife. Thanks for the link. I'll see if I can scare down a couple pounds.

/tricia

I've

That was a wonderful story about Red Fife, especially since it was developed close to where my mother was born and raised in Ontario, Canada. Thanks so much for sharing the link. I'll have to try and locate some Red Fife out of curiosity.

I mill "pastry" flour from soft white wheat. Whole wheat pastry flour doesn't have any hard wheat flour in it, while all-purpose flour is a mixture of hard wheat and soft wheat and what I call "enough" flour. Enough hard wheat flour to give it enough gluten strength to make yeast breads, and enough soft wheat flour to be able to use it for quick breads and cakes, but it's not the optimum flour for either use.

To make cake flour I mill a 3:1 mixture of soft white wheat and oats or spelt. This reduces the gluten even more so I can make wholegrain chiffon and angel food cakes.

What we miss out on when all we ever knew was all-purpose flour...

-Grainlady

I bought a pound of organic whole wheat pastry flour in the store last week and I too am loving it. But it was 4 times more than the usual whole wheat flour I buy. I am going to have to look in to ordering it online, but I don't know if that will be cheaper. Maybe also check out the local health food store but the only day I can go there is Sat. and I always seem to miss their open hours. I just made oatmeal scones with it tonight, yum! My baked goods are all turning out so much better since I started using it.

You can order Red Fife at the link. There are some other unusual flour products also but they're all pricey.

Here is a link that might be useful: Anson Mills Red Fife

Man I thought the organic pastry flour I bought was expensive at $2.50 a lb.!

What is the difference bet ww flour and ww pastry flour?

Susy, how timely this thread is since everyone will soon be making irish soda bread for St. Pat's. I made scones last night with pastry flour for the first time, boy did they turn out great!

SF, Grainlady kind of explains it above, but basically hard wheat flour has more gluten so gives a better rise for yeast breads, (makes them develop better structure), but soft wheat flour (which is what pastry flour is made from) has less gluten so gives a lighter, "softer" texture to your breads that don't rely on yeast for their rise, so cakes, muffins, shortbreads, pie crusts, etc. Hard wheat and soft wheat are two separate strains of wheat, but I'm not sure exactly what the differences are between the two types of plants. If memory serves me (a 30 year old one) it has something to do with maybe the size of the wheat kernel or the makeup of the kernel (which basically means the "seed" of the wheat plant).

And if I'm not mistaken, "cake flour" is the softest of all, which is listed as a product of the company Sally linked to. Soft wheat flour is hard to find around my way for some reason, but evidently more common in the south since people make a lot more biscuits down there I guess.

I paid just near $4(CDN) for 1 kg (2.2 lbs) of Red Fife.

Whole wheat flour, technically, is flour milled from the whole grain, and nothing more. It can be milled from hard or soft grain, spring or winter grain, red or white varieties, or even durum wheat (which is used for making pasta). Although it's generally understood "whole wheat" flour is flour with enough gluten in it for yeast breads.

Pastry flour, as already posted by lpinkmountain is milled from soft wheat varieties - which is lower in gluten and best used for baked goods where you don't want a lot of gluten development - cakes, pastry, cookies, quick breads, etc.

When you mill your own flour it's important to understand these grains and their baking characteristics. In storage I keep:

-hard red winter and hard white winter wheat varieties
-hard red spring and hard white spring wheat
-soft white wheat
-durum wheat (used for pasta)
-triticale (a hybrid of rye and durum wheat)

To make "cake" flour, which is lower in gluten than pastry flour, I use a 3:1 mixture of soft white wheat and either oats or spelt. The low-gluten flour is great for delicate cakes like Chiffon or Angel Food.

Winter/Spring - indicates the growing season of wheat. In the mid- and southern States that grow wheat, it's planted in the fall, grows about 8-10-inches and winters-over. The plants go dormant during the winter, breaks dormancy late Feb., and matures during the summer and is harvested in June/July/August, starting in the southern States and traveling north. Spring wheat is grown in the northern States and southern Canada. It is planted in the spring and harvested late summer/early fall.

Winter wheat generally is a smaller seed than spring wheat. Hard winter wheat mills into a slightly stronger flour, containing more glutenins than spring wheat because of the longer growing season than spring wheat. But those smaller grains of hard winter wheat contain more bran after it's milled, while spring wheat has more of the starchy endosperm.

Hard/Soft - These are primarily terms of interest to millers to describe the texture of the endosperm and how it breaks down in milling, but are also related to bread-making strength. Hard for higher gluten levels, soft for lower gluten levels. If you forget which variety of wheat you milled into flour, all you have to do is rub it between your fingers to know. Hard wheat varieties are slightly gritty, while soft wheat is soft like talcum powder.

Red/White - Bran color. Red and white wheat have the same plant traits and nutrition, but the bran color is different. Red wheat has 3 genes that determines the bran color. Early varieties, such as Turkey Red, had 3 genes that made the bran very dark, the flour very dark, and the taste was very acidic. Most of today's varieties of red wheat only have one or two of these genes for less color and a less acidic flavor. Think of white wheat as the albino of wheat varieties. It has no genes for bran color so it's light in color and the taste is mild and almost sweet-tasting.

Durum is a different variety that has the highest amount of protein, but the dominant of the protein group in durum wheat is the gliadin protein, rather than the glutenin. Therefore it's best used for pasta because of it's strength and viscosity.

-Grainlady

I have a big bag of Red Fife that a colleague sent me from Canada. I use it in bread, but I mix it with other flours, as the finished product is just too dense and sturdy on its own.
And my local WalMart sells a very similar artisanal flour from Montana.

What a day...

I e-mailed Anson Mills yesterday, and talked to them today on the phone. What nice folks! They took great care answering all my questions.

I'll be purchasing not only Red Fife, but several items from them (I have to order a total of 50# - plus shipping). This is going to be a complete indulgance - but I'm worth it (LOL)! The Red Fife whole wheat berries cost $3.50/pound (YIKES!!!), and Farro at $6.95/pound, but it will be a new challenge. I'm going to compare Red Fife to our own Kansas variety of a heritage wheat, hard winter Turkey Red.

Once again, thanks for putting me onto a "new" wheat variety I haven't experienced before.

FIY - In order to make light and lofty loaves using Red Fife, ditch modern quick methods of making breads - aka straight or direct-mix method, and use a sponge (preferable overnight) or sourdough (naturally-leavened) methods. Methods that incorporate long, slow fermentation will give you better results, according to the information they shared with me.

-Grainlady

Oh dear. I feel like such an enabler! ;-)

Thanks for the tip to use a sponge. I'll keep that in mind when I get around to making some loaves.