My first flour from the grain mill...
11 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
My birthday is next weekend and I'll have reached the big 6-0, it doesn't seem possible. I told my girls that no birthdays count from now one until I'm old enough for Social Security, LOL. Anyway, Elery bought me a birthday gift, we had discussed getting one and how we would use it, or whether we would use it.
Here's the first flour, milled twice. It's from Hard Red Winter Wheat, GMO free and organically grown, obtained from Wheat Montana.
The dough was mixed, but the results were not promising. I got a big, brown bowl of glop, heavy and dense.
OK, maybe it would benefit from an overnight rise. This morning I uncovered the bowl and got the slightly fermented scent of sourdough but the dough hadn't risen. At all. (sigh)
Time to see if I can "save" this, I guess. Let's see, I used milk and local honey. The yeast was/is fine. I added an acidic ingredient in the form of orange juice. The most likely culprit seems to be gluten development, or the lack thereof. Not being one to easily give up, I proceeded.
I made a biga with a cup of flour, a cup of water, some more honey and a little more yeast and let that work. And work it did, until it overflowed the bowl and onto the counter. That's a good thing, really...
I added half the biga and half the dough, broken into chunks, into the pan of my bread machine. That old workhorse Zojirushi has never let me down, and so I pushed the dough button and walked away. When the cycle finished I formed my loaves and set them to rise while the other half of the dough was in the machine.
When I uncovered the loaves they hadn't risen much, but they were lighter and less dense, so they went into the oven. Even I was slightly surprised when I pulled these out:
The crust was chewy but not tough and the interior was soft and moist:
So, after several hours of grinding, kneading, thinking, re-kneading, and overnight rise and some thought, I have two baguettes, one round loaf and two par-baked pizza crusts. The flavor is good enough that my whole wheat hating grandkids ate warm slices plain, with no butter at all, although I didn't think it was really that much better than the bread I make with King Arthur whole wheat. Elery loves it, so I guess it was a success!
Annie
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11 years agolast modified: 11 years agoRelated Discussions
Grain Mills and Freshly Milled Grain
Comments (25)Carol, We bought some pullets and also some straight run. Most of the straight run birds turned out to be roosters. It has been hysterically funny. If you think listening to one young rooster trying to figure out how to crow is funny, just multiply it by 5. They all can crow pretty well now but for a while it was just pitiful. Now that they've figured out the whole crowing thing, they are working really hard on crowing in unison. So far, they get along and aren't fighting. One of the Welsummer roosters is clearly the alpha male, and as long as the others respect that, they may not fight very much. The bad thing about having roosters is that they start crowing around 3-5 a.m. and I am a light sleeper. These roosters are kind of sweet. Every other rooster we've had in the past had to be taught that if you spur the human, you get kicked in the head. (They learn fast.) These roosters haven't even tried to spur a human. Hooray--civilized roosters! We're getting oodles of eggs, and one hen is acting like she might go broody and sit on the nest, but it is getting late in fall for her to start that because it would be cold when the chicks hatch out. So, we'll probably continue gathering the eggs and then let her set on a clutch of eggs in the spring. Barb, It is not at all hard to build a secure coop/run. There are photos and plans all over the internet. With a chicken run, what has worked for us is having it fenced on all sides, including the ground and the top, so they can't fly out and predators can't fly in, dig in, climb in or jump in. If the coop has predator proof doors that are closed every night, they'll be fine. Snakes are sometimes a problem here, and we kill every one that comes into the chicken coop. Tim tried catching and releasing chicken/rat snakes against my will, and they always came back, usually within 24 hours, so now they all get shot. We've had one snake take out a half-dozen chicks in one day, so we keep chicks in a brooder cage made of 1/4" hardware cloth until they are 3/4s grown. This year we have had exactly one snake in the chicken coop, and it didn't do any harm, so it has been a very good year in that regard. Check out some of the chicken housing on the link. I bet at least one of your sons is handy enough to help you build one. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Chicken Coop Designs...See More?s for those who mill their grains
Comments (10)It's obviously not been triple-cleaned, and to me that's a MUST when someone sells you food-grade wheat. It looks like it came straight out of the combine hopper, or nearly so. All you are lacking in the picture are the green wings of beetles, an occasional June Bug, and a few cricket legs in your wheat. We winnowed wheat once when a friend gave us some of his prize hard winter white wheat straight from the combine. Hubby laughed as he picked out bug parts, saying how this really wasn't vegan-friendly....but that's another story. Soft wheat is low-protein (low-gluten). It should have worked fine for biscuits, in fact it's preferred. Your dough was wet because of the lower amount of protein in the grain/flour than the flour you usually use. If you are accustomed to using high-protein wheat (Prairie Gold) in your recipe, or even all-purpose flour, then you will need to either decrease the liquid or increase the amount of flour, adding enough flour until it's the right "feel" for biscuit dough. Obviously, this flour won't work for yeast breads because of the low-gluten (soft wheat is always low-protein). Use it for pastry, cakes and quick breads, and even then you may need to adjust the amount of flour because I suspect it has even less protein than all-purpose flour and most recipes call for all-purpose. If you want to do a protein check, place 2-3/4 c. of the flour (slightly packed - drag the measuring cup up the side of the container when leveling) in the bowl of a food processor with the steel knife attachment, and add 1 c. of water. Process for about 30 seconds. If the mixture forms a sticky dough ball in the food processor, then the flour is around 8% protein, or the equivalent to cake flour. If it forms a ball using 2-1/2 c. of flour slightly packed - drag the measuring cup up the side of the container when leveling) then it's about 10% protein, or the equivalent to all-purpose flour. For high-protein bread flour (around 14% protein) it takes 2-cups (slightly packed - drag the measuring cup up the side of the container when leveling) + 1 T. -Grainlady...See MoreWhat is Occident flour? Need ideas for 10 Grain flour too.
Comments (4)Make bread with the occident flour. From the label, the occident flour is bromated (potassium bromate). Years ago it was common for flour to contain bromates and iodates, which are dough conditioners, and they gave bread dough more extensibility. That's when "double" was the common standard to allow dough to rise. Now, without bromates in flour, it's best to only allow dough to rise to just UNDER double or you chance over-proofing the dough. There was an anti-bromate movement and California banned bromates in flour and it has been removed from most commercial flour products. It has been replaced with ascorbic acid. The malted barley flour in the occident flour will add a bit of a nutty flavor. If it was diastatic barley malt, that contributes enzymes that break down the big molecules of starch into the simple sugars that yeast can use. As for the 10-grain flour, check out recipes at Bob's Red Mill (scroll down the page - just before the reviews): Vegan 10-Grain Pancakes Banana Pecan Coffee Cake 10-Grain Yogurt Quick Bread Craig's World Famous Natural Granola (or Bars) Because there are a number of low-gluten and gluten-free grains/seeds/beans in the 10-grain mixture, you need to be mindful of that for making a yeast bread with it. Use it in combination with a high-gluten bread flour for bread so you have enough gluten available (start by substituting 20-25% of the bread flour with 10-grain flour). It will work for quick breads and cookies because of the lower gluten level. -Grainlady Here is a link that might be useful: 10-Grain Flour - Bob's Red Mill...See MoreBob's Red Mill 10 Grain Flour Stone Ground
Comments (14)I mill my own flour from a wide variety of grains/seeds/beans, so I've also learned gluten levels and how they work in baked goods. Although the 10-grain flour contains wheat flour, it's not clear how much is used in the mixture. Probably a large portion is wheat because it's much less expensive than the other grains/seeds in the mix. It's also not clear what kind of wheat - soft or hard wheat - is in the mixture, which will make a lot of difference for making bread dough. I like to mill my own mixtures so I can be sure what I'm using, and to assure I have the freshest flour possible for the highest amount of nutrition possible. Fresh is best..... You need a high portion of flour from wheat (bread flour or all-purpose flour, or whole wheat milled from hard wheat varieties), in order to have enough gluten to make a yeast-risen bread. It's also preferable to have a high-gluten flour for making pizza dough. Wheat has the highest amount of gluten of all grains. Any other grain/seed will be either low-gluten or gluten-free. Spelt is the only other grain with enough gluten to make a nice loaf of yeast bread, but even the gluten type in spelt is much different, and much lower than the gluten in wheat. The gluten level in spelt is about 5,000 parts per million. Compare that to wheat which begins at 50,000 parts per million and goes up from there. For your pizza dough you will probably be fine using 1/2 bread flour and 1/2 10-grain flour. As Teresa pointed out, you may need to add a little extra flour to get the right "feel". The low-gluten and gluten-free flour doesn't absorb as much hydration as high-gluten flour (bread flour). If you don't like the results, use a different ratio of bread flour to 10-grain flour (75% bread flour to 25% 10-grain), or add some vital wheat gluten (1 T. per cup of 10-grain flour) to make up for the low-gluten flour. If the 10-grain mixture has a lot of rye flour in it, rye flour characteristically makes dough rather sticky to work with - even with the correct hydration. People often add too much flour to compensate for the stickiness, which will make the dough too dry. There are other methods to use when working with a sticky dough, such as kneading it with wet hands (dip your hands in a small bowl of water periodically), oil your hands with vegetable oil, or placing the dough in a gallon-size freezer zip lock bag, pushing out as much air as possible before closing it, and kneading it from outside the bag (you can alter the hydration if necessary). There are also kneading gloves available that work for kneading sticky doughs. -Grainlady...See More- 11 years ago
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