Sue, according to Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver if you make your own creAm cheese it will be lactose free. Commercially produced stuff uses chemicals so the lactose is still there. Co-op food stores and health food stores etc might also have cultured cream cheese. Here is an oatmeal wheat bread that I got from Ohio Mom's website. I tried to find it on her site to link to it and could not find it. This is my families favorite bread. Oatmeal Wheat Bread 2 packages yeast 1/4 cup warm water 2 cups cooked oatmeal (not instant) 1/2 cup warm buttermilk 1/3 cup brown sugar 1/4 cup melted butter 2 tsp. salt 2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour Mix the yeast and water, let stand for 5 minutes. Mix again. Add oatmeal, buttermilk, sugar, butter, salt and whole wheat flour and all purpose flour. Work in enough to form a soft dough. Knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. Place in a large bowl and cover with damp cloth. Let rise in a warm place (not oven) for 2 hours. Punch down the dough and let rest for 10 minutes. Form 2 loaves and place in buttered loaf pans. (9x5x3inch) Redampen the cloth and cover the loaves, allow to rise another 45 minutes in a warm place until proofed. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bake for about 40 to 45 minutes. Here is a link that might be useful: Ohio Mom's Blog

--Whole wheat pastry flour is milled from low-gluten, low-protein, soft wheat varieties. I use soft white wheat for pastry flour, or anywhere I don't need a lot of gluten development. Spelt is another good wholegrain choice when you don't need a lot of gluten development. Spelt has a gluten level that is 5,000 parts per million; compared to wheat which begins at 50,000 parts per million and go up from there. --Technically, "all-purpose" flour was developed commercially for bleached/unbleached flour from a mixture of hard wheat and soft wheat. There's enough hard wheat so it has enough gluten to make yeast breads, and enough soft wheat flour so it makes decent quick breads, pastry or cakes - so it covers "all purposes", but it's NOT the optimum choice of flour for most things, other than soft dinner rolls. We've just developed our flour use from the most common commercial flour available - all-purpose - with occasional moves to Southern all-purpose for biscuits and quick breads, and the even more elusive cake flour for beautiful tender cakes. Even in the world of commercial bleached/unbleached all-purpose flour there are great differences... Northern all-purpose flour (King Arthur and Robin Hood - 11-12) have a higher protein level than National Brands (Gold Medal and Pillsbury 10-12). Southern all-purpose flour (7.5-9.5) is milled from soft wheat, so it's best used for quick breads, biscuits, muffins, pastry, cookies, cakes - foods where you don't want a lot of gluten development. A mix of 3:2 hard wheat to soft white wheat is a great "all-purpose" mixture when you want soft yeast rolls. Otherwise, choosing a mix of hard wheat and soft wheat is less than optimum for other baked goods. --Whole wheat "bread" flour would mean a high protein level milled from hard wheat. Bleached/Unbleached bread flour has a protein level of 13-14. I've milled wheat that was 16% protein and made yeast bread with it, but it takes a lot more kneading to develop the gluten and you find you have tough bread as a result of the high protein level. This also happens when you add too much vital wheat gluten to a recipe, so more (protein/gluten) is not necessarily better. The protein levels of wheat I purchase is generally between 13% and 14% protein, which is more than enough to raise a lofty loaf of bread. If you tend to get short squatty loaves of 100% whole wheat bread, there are other factors you need to address besides protein/gluten levels - such as stop using a (quick mix) direct dough method and switch to a sponge method. A sponge will help soften the bran - the sharp edges of bran can cut the gluten strands. A sponge method also helps develop the gluten without kneading. Adding an acid ingredient (vinegar, lemon juice, ascorbic acid, etc) to the recipe has a positive effect. There is a substance in wheat germ called Gluthione which breaks down the gluten strands. Adding an acid, such as ascorbic acid, counteracts the negative effects of Glutathione. Ascorbic acid helps to prevent the gluten bonds from breaking down and will repair the gluten bonds, so you'll get a high-rising loaf of 100% whole wheat bread. I generally add 1/8 t. ascorbic acid per loaf of bread when making bread that includes wheatgerm (as a single ingredient or from whole wheat flour). -Something we tend to forget, or possibly didn't even know, hard wheat wasn't even available for milling until the late 1870's when the German Mennonites arrived here in Kansas and brought the granddad of all hard winter wheat varieties, Turkey Red, with them from Europe. Prior to the developing of the hard winter varieties of wheat, all flour was milled from soft wheat. The mills liked soft wheat for milling into flour because it was easy to grind in one pass through the mill, and had a much larger extraction of flour. Soft wheat tends to be a plumper seed with more endosperm, while hard winter wheat is small and rather wrinkled with more bran and less endosperm. You can tell the difference between hard and soft wheat when you mill it at home - the hard wheat flour is more coarse and gritty from the bran, while soft wheat renders a very soft, talcum powder feeling flour. --"Bread flour" or high protein flour milled from hard wheat, was available to commercial bakers and they referenced it by calling it "strong" wheat flour. Strong and weak wheats indicate a wheat or flour's baking strength. It wasn't until the advent of the bread machine in the 1980's that high-gluten bread flour became available for home use. Up until that time all-purpose flour, which is a medium-protein level flour, was about the only kind of flour available for home use. If "whole wheat bread flour" is called for, it means use a "regular" whole wheat flour which is milled from hard wheat, instead of "pastry" whole wheat flour, which is milled from soft wheat. -Grainlady

No. Soaking the wheatberries will make them too soft, and you'll get slurry instead of flour, and it will be hard to control the hydration. Yes, soak the flour, but in the amount of water you want to use for the recipe. It may seem crumbly dry, but just make sure it's as well mixed as you can. It'll be nice and moist at the end of the soaking period. I think I'd soak all the flour, rather than just the WW, but that's something to experiment with. Maybe the white would be greedy and soak it all up before the WW had a chance. Best of both worlds, soak the ww, then do an hour autolyze after mixing the rest. Do soak the WW for at least 8 hrs. Overnight is good. This is even more important if you have little chunks you’re trying to soften. An alternative to having coarsely ground bits of wheat, would be to mix in some interesting other whole grain, like millet. Just toss it into the soak. It's very nice. I've also used amaranth, buckwheat groats, various seeds and whatever took my fancy. Just keep to a small enough quantity that it doesn't impede the rise. Don't chill it unless your baking day gets postponed more than a day or two, and you think you'll get mold. Just cover your vessel, and leave it on the counter. Ambient humidity does make a big difference. I know you baked professionally, but I can't remember what. IME, all that “baking is chemistry” cliche stuff is about cake (which includes quickbreads and cookies). You have to have the right specific ingredients, in the right quantities, with the right methods under the right circumstances, to get a replicable product. Breads are different. They're much more about art, about adjusting for how dry your flour is, how dry the air, how active the yeast. You know there’s enough flour or water when it feels right. Pastry seams somewhere in between.

Better not to taste. It could have microbes you don't want. Open it. If it doesn't smell bad, take out a couple of tablespoons of flour and put it in a non-smell dish (glass, corelle or hard glazed, not plastic) and let it come up to room temperature or a little warmer, like 73-78° F, i.e., not ”cool”. Then without agitating it (so you don't get flour up your nose) give it a good sniff. If it doesn't smell rancid, it should be fine. Fresh will be livelier, but it's fine to eat. Do warm up and smell the full measure as well, just to be sure. Rancid shouldn't make you sick, but it tastes bad, and it's the oxidation of the oil which we're supposed to avoid.