Fun with Flour
I've told you all that I ordered a goodly amount of flour from Central Milling, which is something I'd started to do before normal flour vanished from the stores. Given that we're going to be home for the foreseeable future, and I bake regularly, and I had far less flour on hand than I had thought, I opted for more than less (1 large bag of each kind), and got bins to hold it in. I'd been thinking of sealing and freezing, because I know a lot of people do, but having read up on flour storage, I opted for bins. I actually thought that they'd fit in the bottom of my pantry cabinet, but with lids on it was no go, so they're just sitting in the butler's pantry. That's okay, at least for now. I'm going to push them even farther from the light, though they get no direct light or heat where they are.
I dithered about whether to post this, because I know a lot of you are having trouble finding flour, but a couple of friends convinced me that some would really enjoy seeing it, and the rest could skip it.
The different shapes of the bins, with different colors, contain slightly different flours. I figured this would be the best way to make it obvious which was which. They're all labelled as well. The canisters are old, empties that used to have wheatberries, and I was lucky to have a round and a square free. I had to give up whole wheat, which still makes me sad. :( I'd been trying King Arthur unbleached bread flour (12.7% protein) again, this time with higher hydration, and still found it too heavy. The gluten seizes as soon as it gets wet, and it overkneads way too easily. The CM organic malted 11.5% protein had been recommended to me for the kinds of bread I was working on, and it was confirmed in a web search. That's in the square bins. I'd been using KA unbleached (11.7% protein) for biscuits and muffins, which can get a gummy mouthfeel if they're moist and made with GM bleached AP (10.5% protein), but the Gold Medal for cakes and cookies, and other lighter baking has always been my standard. Since I mysteriously don't have a backup bag, and am staying out of the stores, I thought I should get some plain (no barley malt) unbleached organic flour for general baking. It's also 11.5% protein, and fairly equivalent to the KA AP. That's in the round bins.
Blueberry Clafoutis (plain flour) (I overdid the blueberries, but every single one that hadn't a spot of mold went in). Lovely fluffy flour. Feels more like the GM than the KA. Nice yellow color, like when I mill my own, rather than the kind of gray color of the KA. Not enough flour in it to really tell more, but that's a good thing considering I'm substituting for the GM AP here. Though I have buttermilk that needs using, so I should make some biscuits to compare to the KA AP.
Herb Bread (malted flour), below, set on end so the crumb could catch the light. Lovely feel to the flour. Good development of the gluten. I used Red Star yeast, which is highly thought of in the forum, because i couldn't get Fleischman's. Excellent yeast. Lovely crust. I actually added a couple tablespoons of water because the loaf felt dry at first, but I think it spread so much because it rose fast and really needed more kneading, rather than being too wet. I'm still working on this recipe, and given that it was a new kind of flour and yeast both, it came out very well. I've made this recipe three times before with KA, which was good enough to keep baking, but the CM is much better! Excellent flavor, the malt doesn't really affect the taste (i.e., add malt for pizza or bagels) but I assume it did its bit for the quality of the loaf. Perfect open crumb. See how yellow it is? Most of that is the lighting, but it's also the color of the flour. It's whiter than the plain, but still a tiny bit yellow.
Secret ingredient: Marjoram. I've previously discovered that marjoram was essential for making something taste like pizza. The one time I didn't have marjoram in this herb bread, it was kind of flat tasting. I happen to have a lot of dried marjoram (kept forgetting it tick it off my grocery list), so that's fine. The marjoram and other typical Italian herbs don't make the bread taste like pizza, but they sure make it taste good! The herbs altogether elevate the bread from that "white bread" thing.
Carolb's Uncle Barney's Spritz cookies (plain flour), below. Shells, a few posies. Lovely, vanilla butter cookies. The posies on the left were really hard to make. The press had to be cleaned between each one. The shells were a delight and went poom poom poom, like they're supposed to. The quatrefoils, below, were in between. Some fails could be kind of mooshed back together, though. They taste the same. :) Light, delicate, no floury taste like one sometimes gets with heavier flour. The butter was pale and the egg wasn't corn fed, so some of the yellowness could be the flour and vanilla. I made them without added flavor (Carol suggests nutmeg) because I wanted to get to know the base recipe first. The cookies are nicely solid. I placed them carefully in the tin, rather than dumping, but they seem resilient.
Much of point was to try out my new spritz gun (see below), but I also wanted to know how the flour did. I suppose if I think really hard, I can tell that it's a little heavier than Gold Medal, but I do know how to make cookies and when you don't develop the gluten, there's not much difference anyway. I do sense a difference from KA unbleached AP, though, which just seems denser. This is fascinating, since the CM is ostensibly more similar to KA AP than GM AP. Whatever. I'll try a cake next, to be sure, but I'm thinking love is blossoming here. Organic, unbleached, and fine? The trifecta!
Carolb's Uncle Barney's Spritz quatrefoils, below. My mother tried to make spritz cookies when I was little. She still has the metal press. I kept forgetting to abscond with it, however, so bought a cheap Chinese plastic cookie gun off of Amazon. It looked a lot like my Wilton frosting press, so I already had proof of concept. The actual gun is well designed and works great. My only issue was it was impossible to unscrew the top end to reload. No big deal to load from the bottom, just harder to hold. Heating the threads made it possible to unscrew while washing. Maybe a dab of oil, if I remember in the future.
Mother's attempts at spritz were very pretty, but they didn't taste good and she despaired of all the recipes she tried. When Carolb posted her recipe, I was kind of trilled. I love the concept. :) I didn't get a chance to bake over the holidays, but the new flour was a good excuse to make cookies, and a little spritz cookie is very satisfying, so a good choice all around, trying out the new gun as well. Excellent recipe with no issues. I scanted the sugar a little, on general principles, since I don't like oversweet (and I'll be eating most of the cookies--they're not chocolate chip!). I also thought the recommended timing seemed long for my oven which holds temperature much closer than older ovens. I didn't use convection because I assumed it was an old recipe. Sure enough, about 10 minutes (watching for just that hint of brown at the edges, was just right, rather than the 12-15 called for. The cookie gun might make smaller cookies than the original, too. Some spritz I've seen are twice the size, though this is perfect for me.
The holes for the posies are wide, The petals separated and they didn't stick well to the baking sheet. I tried parchment, but that was worse. The shells have narrow slits and a few dots and worked great. The quatrefoil has the narrow slits, but they sort of clung to the press, though could sometimes be pried off, then they'd do four in a row just right. I don't know if the dough had gotten too warm, or if there were any other reason. They were mostly not-annoying. Next time, I'll try some other dies and see how they do.
I've had a lot of fun with flour this week. I love flour. I'm infatuated with my new flour. :) Bless Central Milling!
Comments (186)
6 years agoRelated Discussions
how many grams equal cup of cake flour?
Comments (3)Thanks, Linda. I thought the box ought to be the best source, but when I found the other information, it made me doubt myself. I always appreciate your advice and kitchen wisdom! And I don't know why I asked for grams. My question could just as easily have been "how many ounces equal a cup of cake flour?" My handy-dandy scale will measure either....See MoreCanadian flour
Comments (4)I would suggest making something with the new flours that you are very familiar with so you can see if there is a difference. I tried King Arthur flour and really did not notice a difference so for the price, I'll stick to my Ceresota Flour. King Arthur flour and the flour from my bulk store were both total duds for my sourdough starter, same starter with Ceresota fermented beautifully. My rye sd starter is not doing as well and again bulk store rye flour. Could be old rye but I doubt it as the bin is frequently empty. I would like to try Five Roses next and my market stocks it so I will pick up a bag after the holidays. My goodness I've not seen Robin Hood flour in years. Michelle...See MorePantry Magic and the Miracle of AP Flour
Comments (3)A quarter teaspoon makes such a difference, doesn't it? I once lived in a time and place where bp and soda came in little packets. Measuring was a big problem, and I finally learned that half a packet, by eye, of baking powder was enough for a cake, and that it didn't really matter so long as you didn't forget it. KA are protein happy. :) Their flours are "heavier" than others. So I guess it's natural that the helper suggested half AP for cakes. Or they say that so it'll come out more like cake mix. For standard American white flours, there are four basic categories based on the fact that Southern wheat is traditionally "soft" (lower protein=less gluten) and hard Northern wheat gives "heavier" (higher protein=more gluten): pastry flour 6% protein, cake flour 8% (plain soft wheat), all purpose flour 10.5% (mix of both kinds of wheat), bread flour 13% (hard wheat). As flour is milled and sold there are a lot of variations. They can test for the protein content of the crop, and try to produce a stabilized protein content so the consumer can have a similar experience, bag after bag. Scroll down to Antilope's chart detailing many flours by protein content: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/17045/protein-content-flour For cake, you don't want gluten development. If you leave flour mixed with liquid to sit, the gluten will develop itself. That's the genius behind no knead bread. Kneading promotes the development of the gluten. Stretch it, bang on it, roll it, and it speeds up the process. You can also control the extent by feeling the texture. That's bread. For cake, you want fluff not stretch, and the stretchy gluten will just make the cake tough. If you bake a cake with pure Swansdown cake flour, you'll get a lovely, airy, melt on the tongue (especially if your fat is butter), open crumb, feather light cake. That's the point of cake flour! With major mill standard white AP, you'll get a denser cake that is still light, but more substantial. With heavier AP's, like King Arthur unbleached, you're wandering into bread territory. As I said, my biscuits, which are also in the feather light, no gluten zone, seem to love KA unbleached, but it's better for lacy breads than cakes. In cakes, it's noticeably heavier in the eating. Lacy bread comes from gluten that is strong enough to puff up well but weak enough for some of the bubbles to break like they do in bubbly bath where they combine to make bigger bubbles. I haven't been baking as much this past year so have less flour, but always have wheatberries (hard red, hard white and soft white), ryeberries, and small amounts of other grains, to mill as needed, as well as vital wheat gluten, barley malt, etc. I also keep Gold Medal white, Gold Medal bread (for my mother's challah recipe which is more like brioche and doesn't want a heavier flour) and KA unbleached white. I've been known to use KA unbleached bread flour for country style bread, but in the past I was far more likely to use whole wheat so haven't been keeping it on hand....See MoreDaily Bread
Comments (22)Our daily bread is challah. My husband makes a double batch almost every Friday (2 small loaves go to my son who lives nearby). When my other son's visit, he may even make a triple batch to make french toast for everyone and send a loaf or two home with them. I think my husband would happily have that as his only bread - there seems to be a trend here of husbands who prefer soft breads. Bit it isn't universal; one of my son's makes sour dough and really likes that. He has tweaked the recipe to use white whole wheat for part of the flour. If we have any other kind of bread, I make it. So I fill out variety for our daily bread. I've been working on perfecting bagels and rye bread. My bagels sometimes come out perfect and sometimes come out tasting fine but looking kind of bumpy. I think that happens when they have over-risen before boiling so I'm working on perfecting that timing. I'm pretty happy with my rye bread now. The secret to getting the right chewy deli rye texture is the choice of wheat flour for the bread. It needs a flour that isn't quite a whole wheat but that uses more of the grain than white bread flour. BC (before Covid) I was using first clear flour from King Arthur, but that was out of stock forever (King Arthur's website now says it is "sold out for the season." I've found that 110 flour from Central Milling produces good results. I tried it because some websites on flour types said that German 110 flour is equivalent to American first clear. I also do pita, naan, sour dough and whole wheat breads. I just made some naan and wasn't happy with the results; we replaced our ovens recently and I need to figure out what settings on my new oven work best for naan....See More
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6 years agoThank you all for the recipes. I will give them all a try some day. This last couple of days I've been missing my Mom so I used her recipe. They came out really good. But silly me didn't look at the recipe first so I set butter out to soften. It's back in the fridge; the recipe calls for shortening. Seems to be a common thread among the recipes!
Nice and crispy outside and chewy inside. But while measuring out ingredients I realized I have probably less than a teaspoon of ground cinnamon left :-0. The last few times I've gone to the store I've stared at my list and thought that there is something that I need to add and couldn't remember what it was. Sigh. I remember now! :-\
plllog, I'm so happy for you that you have found such a wonderful pizza crust recipe!
plllog thanked ediej1209 AL Zn 7- 6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago
6 years agoHeyo!
I'll throw in this awesome banana bread recipe.
I just tried it out, but used muffin forms instead, as you can see on a photo :)
Verrrrrry delicious! I've also added a bit of sugar substitute for extra sweetness
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So last night was pizza night. I loosely followed two recipes given for my Caputo Americana, one meant for a thin crust pizza and one for Sicilian.
The Sicilian was interesting. I took it out of the fridge, stretched it, and let it rise in the pan for about 6 hours. It puffed up into a sponge which mostly collapsed as I gently brushed a thin layer of sauce prior to the pre-bake. By the time it was done it was a fairly crunchy fried sponge, quite delicious actually but nothing at all Sicilianish. Something very wrong here, even though we loved it:
I’d call the thin crust more of a success, by far the easiest dough to stretch that I’ve ever made. I was able to stretch on the table, then over my hands, toss back and forth, and generally look like a wannabe idiot and there were no holes or thin spots to patch up. I made two smaller pies:
If you’re thinking that looks a little light on cheese, you’d be correct. It was for my daughter. Another pie was half for her:
I realize I should neaten things up a bit if I’m going to post pictures. Anyway I’ve obviously got a very long way to go, but it was not a disappointing meal. 2 pounds down, 53 to go!
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All week, I've been forgetting to make my pie!! That's Lindac's grandma-in-law's rhubarb pie with meringue. I despise strawberry rhubarb pie--IMHO ruins both the strawberries and the rhubarb. This one sounded good, and I bought rhubarb to try it. Luckily, the rhubarb didn't suffer from staying in the fridge. I had a nap, and was ready to tackle it this evening. That's too strong a word, maybe. The pie is dead easy. Except I broke a yolk on the second egg, and stuck the first two in a lidded ramekin in the fridge and tried again. This time the whites got to soft peaks then fell. There could have been some yolk left in the jug, or I could have over beaten them. Or something else. Luckily, I remembered a jar of eggwhites, though I can't remember where the yolks went. It seemed fine, so I slopped out about the same amount and that whipped fine. There was no way I was going to risk squishing it by piping, so I did the random dollop method of applying the meringue to the pie. :)
Caution: Do not try this at home. I decided that since I didn't know the bacteria content but had good reason to think it was fine, I indulged my childhood selt, and licked the scraper, then scraped the bowl and ingested more. I figured that browning the meringue wouldn't be enough to kill something bad, so better if I use myself as a test subject. :) And I was hungry, craving sugar, and still delight in glossy eggwhites. I'll let you know if it turns out badly. :)I cut a sliver as a test, once the pie was cool. Yeah, right. I cut another sliver just to be sure. I knew it was going to be a sweet pie from the proportions, and it is, but I think it needs it. The rhubarb was young and sweet, however, and the flavor seems a bit overwhelmed by the sweet. But that could be that cooled pie thing where it's not as flavorful as hot or chilled. Either way, that's more about the delicacy of the baby rhubarb than the recipe. I took the big container of soup down to the freezer so I could put the whole pie safe in the fridge. The pie might be fine sitting out, but with the meringue aleady being questionable, I wasn't tempting fate. It's not going to stay there long! It's too good! But it's a good thing I made the soup, tossed a couple of things, and got some ten bags and containers gone.
I almost forgot to tell you about the crust! There is flour in the filling, but that's beside the point. The crust is Rhome410's FP recipe. I've made it many times. I noticed on the first crust, on the quiche, that it seemed particularly flaky. On the pie, it's obvious. It could be the new flour, but I think it's the butter. Remember I told you about how fat it was? I don't remember exactly which butter it was that I used, but it definitely had a higher fat content than standard. I think it was the 85% fat butter. I'll be trying that again to confirm.
Fantastic recipe and darned good pie!Thanks, Linda!!
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Whoa!!! Literally. Stop!!
One hour rise. Masking tape marks where it started.
Good thing the lid is tight! See the ropy looking bit? That's where it was trying to get out, pressing into the edges of the lid.
This is the punched down and drawn shape. It's about the size of the kneaded ball, but soft and no longer sticky. Tacky, but not sticky. It clung to the glass, but pulled off cleanly.
This is the Tony G., strong 00 pizza blend in the recipe meant for KA BF, less a bit over half a cup of flour, and 2 tsp yeast rather than a packet (less 1/4 tsp from a packet’s worth).
LATER
Fully risen.
Done
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Cloud Swift asked how it tastes: Really good, as to the flour. I sprinkled the herbs without measure, and they're insufficient, so it's really good white bread (i.e., a superior kind of bland). It's also very soft, and you can see there are some big holes in the bread. It could have used the extra measure of flour I'd removed from the recipe. This is really good bread, mind you, just boring. It was the base for sloppy joes tonight. Perfect for sopping up, but needed a fork.
I still plan to do the buttermilk bread, though likely after trying the other 00 for pizza. Next week. Other than cookies, I think I'm done baking this week. :j. After that, I think I'll work on white sourdough. In fact, maybe I'll try for good and sour. I miss my whole wheat which I'm no supposed to eat, but the family like white. :) - 6 years ago
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Epic fail. I was making the chocolate chip cookies, but I don't think the flour was the issue. I confirmed the recipe with the Expert. I've made them in this oven, on this tray, before, so I know it's not that. The Expert made them once with this kind of margarine (vegan) and he wasn't happy with the product but I ate some of the cookies and they were fine. Perhaps it was warmer in the kitchen than I thought, and I should have followed Chloebud's practice of chilling every cookie dough, but I've never needed to before. The sugar is C&H cane, as usual.
The flavor is a little odd--I think my vanilla is stronger than his, and the bubbling at the edges caramelized, but at least these oddities are edible, unlike the half an egg too much cookies. Though, I know my exact mistake on those. I don't know what's wrong with these. I'll be ordering some of the right kind of dairy margarine (butter doesn't work) and trying again,,,
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plllogOriginal Author